Springtime, it comes with a feeling of newness, nature blooms all around,  Birds can be heard again and bees buzzing around in confused daze.  Speaking of the birds and the bees… this Spring I am taking on the mighty task of having the sex talk with my twelve year old son.  What is amazing about this time in their lives is that they are eager to know the facts, they are ready to take on the knowledge and present it to their friends in tall tales of glory.  The only problem is… I still see a four year old in Superman pajamas asking to watch Finding Nemo for the six hundredth and twenty seventh time.

How many times have I put off this conversation?  Well Nemo has me beat, but not by much.  How many times have I been asked where babies come from?  How many times have I been asked questions like, how come we have pee pees and mommies got cut off, or I can’t get my pee pee to sit down.  I do what all parents do, right?  I put back in Finding Nemo.

I can not put it off any longer.   How do I know?  I have a running joke with my sons about women I find attractive on TV or in magazines.  I will say “hubba hubba” (I’ll admit I’m embarrassed when I see this in writing.)  My sons would get all bent out of shape and say things like.  “Dad you have a wife,” or “Mom is your Jennifer Aniston.”  Recently we are watching a television show and a commercial with Kate Upton comes on and my oldest son says “hubba hubba.”   It took me a minute to realize what had just happened  I immediately reached for the worn copy of Finding Nemo.  Not this time, it was time to man up.

I asked him if there was a girl at school he thought was “hubba hubba.”  He was embarrassed and said no.  I said do you and your friends talk about girls.  He said, not really.  I asked if any of his friends had girlfriends and he said a few.  I said do you want a girlfriend.  He said I guess.

Now for the record, I have a very open relationship with my sons.  My father’s sex speech on the other hand was ‘keep your zipper up.”  Deciding to forgo the father/son traditional sex talk from dad, I have already covered the basis of puberty with my oldest. The fact you will count every strand of pubic hair you get in the beginning only to man scape it off in the future.

I realized how important this was to get right, how with all the wrong information that was out there and his eager attentive ears would be willing to listen. I decided to ease into the conversation.  That by taking the time and nurturing the conversation, the awkwardness would ease itself out.   It did not.  It’s not like you are talking to one of your buddies about hard-ons, masturbating, penetration, and birth control.  I am talking to my twelve year old son who is looking at me with wide eyed Nemoesque eyes in bemused wonderment.  I decide to take the,  do you have any questions, approach.  Here was his question: How does the stuff that squirts out turn into a baby?

I explain about fertilizing the egg and how the “stuff that squirts” is sperm and how it “just keeps swimming” until it is able to find an egg to fertilize. I’m trying to keep it simple and not full of details, I don’t want to cover any of the pleasurable that go along with the science but I had to dive in deeper when he asked if I could fertilize the eggs in the refrigerator.

There actually is a scene in Finding Nemo where Nemo asks his dad Marlin about the age of sea turtles and Marlin just tends to dismiss Nemo, but later Marlin finds out the  answer about sea turtles age.  The problem is Nemo’s still missing.  That is my point I don’t want to have any I wish I did this… or I should have said that.  I don’t want the Marlin moment “I know how old sea turtles are and I have to get to get to my son” as I’m trapped in the belly of a whale.  A little dramatic but enough to rip the heart out of a father.  I want relish in every moment of my children’s life, even the messy parts.

So there is still a lot to be said to my oldest … I’m sitting on the couch with my middle son, glad I have time before I have to go through this with him.  We are watching Spiderman 2 and I am relishing in his nine year old joy when Emma Stone comes on the screen.  Hubba…Hubba.