Condoms +

“He may only touch your boobs if he is doing it with two separate Swiffers held from the length of their poles.”

My daughter is now of an age where there’s a real possibility that dudes will be touching her boobs.  She has a boyfriend (whom I adore), but he’s still a teenaged boy with all the attending testosterone.  He’s going to want to touch her boobs.   Hell, I’m her Mom and I want to touch her boobs.  That sounded wrong didn’t it?  Oh God, I’m going to turn into that Grandma from Sixteen Candles!  I’m going to be feeling up my granddaughters.  It’s just that new boobs are the antithesis of 45 year old, having nursed one’s young, boobs.  There’s a level of visual fascination there.  Mine haven’t been like that in SOOOOO long.

Is it wrong of me to want my daughter to wear a mask that makes her look like Quasimodo?  Convince her to walk with a limp, talk in a terrifying accent?  Just until university. Knowing that she’s holding hands?  Totally cool with that.  It’s adorable.  I hear that she’s being kissed goodbye on the doorstep and I have a moment of commiserative joy, of me going “Awwwwwwww.”  Then I remember what it was like to be having those first kisses.  And then I remember what happens when you start to feel tingly.  When there’s pressure to let him to second base and then to third and then he wants to slide home…

“You need to tell me when you start getting tingly.  Seriously. ‘Cause then you need to be on the pill. Along with the condoms.  You cannot use condoms alone as birth control.  You can’t!!!  It has to be Condoms +.  Condoms + spermicidal foam.  Condoms + the patch.  Condoms + an IUD!!!  And if he gets an orgasm, you get one too!!”

I’m facing the battleground folks.  I have a teenaged daughter.  From now until she leaves home, we’re standing guard against teen pregnancy. There are those parents who will just forbid sex, or ignore the possibility that their kids will be having it, but I remember what it was like being 16 and feeling tingly.  I remember.  Sex is a biological imperative for boys, and though some parents don’t want to admit it, girls too.  It’s what we want to do – as a species.  To turn a blind eye to that fact is insane.  You might as well deny climate change.  12-15 years from now I will be ready to be a grandmother.  Until then, I will stand armed with a fireplace poker, ready to disable any sperm provider that wants to knock up my daughter.

I’m not being euphemistic.  It’s a promise.