Barbie, Ken and Sex Ed.

          In elementary school I had a best friend named Myrth.  "It means laughter," she told me.  "My big sister's name means beautiful," she added.  Her sister's name was Linda.  Myrth and Linda lived with their parents on Friends Avenue near the downtown area of our community.  I had always wanted Linda and my older sister to become friends too, daydreaming of the tidy arrangement that would make, but they never did.
          One day, Myrth came over to my house for the afternoon and we decided to play with our Barbies.  We played on the grass in our sunny backyard, dressing the dolls in several outfits and fussing with their hair, leaving our Ken and Midge dolls to fend for themselves.  After playing for a while, I suggested that Ken come over to Barbie's house for a sleepover.  Myrth covered her mouth in shock.  "Ken and Barbie can't sleep together!" she gasped and she leaned in closer.  "That's how babies are made," she whispered in my ear.
          Thanks to my older siblings, I'd already had some inkling of how babies were made but this was news.  I didn't know that it could also happen when a couple slept in the same bed.  I was embarrassed at my ignorance and at my inappropriate suggestion, and made Myrth promise that she wouldn't tell anyone.  For the next few years, I thought there were two ways babies were made:  1. man and woman having sex, and 2. man and woman sleeping in the same bed.
          After that sunny afternoon and all through my "health" classes as I learned about human sexuality, nothing ever disproved Myrth's theory.  By the end of my freshman year in high school I was determined to find out the truth.  As much as I didn't want to, I knocked on Mom's bedroom door one night and popped the question.  "Do two people have to have sex for a woman to get pregnant, or can a woman get pregnant just by sleeping in the same bed with a man?"  I wanted to make Mom promise not to tell anyone, like I had made Myrth promise all those years ago, but I felt ignorant and embarrassed, and really just wanted to get out of there.
          Mom set me straight and then asked, "Do you have any other questions?"
          Hell no! I was thinking to myself as I left, silently closing the door behind me.