You were very much more an adult than I was. Part of why that was is probably the peculiar way I was raised. Sheltered isn't quite the word for it. Completely disconnected comes closer. At sixteen, I still didn't really understand how people fit together when they were having sex. I _never_ had that embarrassing conversation with my mother. When I was 12 or so, she gave me a small box with a tampon, a pad, a garter belt, and a little booklet about menstruation. A couple hours later she asked me if I had any questions. She told me she used tampons, I think that was the extent of the conversation -- and that was also the closest we came to discussing sex -- with one extremely weird exception, but leave that go, for now. We didn't take a paper, I almost never watched television, I didn't listen to the radio, and I went to parochial schools. Moreover, my family was crazy, and one of the things that crazy families do is turn inwards.
Until I went to college, I had never been outside my parent's house for longer than a week at a time, and those rare occasions were always church camp. True, I was in a cabin with age-mates, but my parents were over in the cabins for adults, so I'm not sure that counts. When I decided to go see "All That Jazz" as a part of my 18th birthday celebration, my parents had cows. We had an hour long argument (in front of my friends, mostly) about whether or not it was appropriate and Christian for me to go to an R-rated movie. It was the second R rated movie I had ever been to. Somehow, I managed to go see "The Deerhunter" when I was 15.
I don't know how to explain how innocent and how cynical I was when I finally escaped to the World. Wait, try this: the closest I'd ever gotten to the real world before I went to college was the SCA.
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You were very much more an adult than I was. Part of why that was is probably the peculiar way I was raised. Sheltered isn't quite the word for it. Completely disconnected comes closer. At sixteen, I still didn't really understand how people fit together when they were having sex. I _never_ had that embarrassing conversation with my mother. When I was 12 or so, she gave me a small box with a tampon, a pad, a garter belt, and a little booklet about menstruation. A couple hours later she asked me if I had any questions. She told me she used tampons, I think that was the extent of the conversation -- and that was also the closest we came to discussing sex -- with one extremely weird exception, but leave that go, for now. We didn't take a paper, I almost never watched television, I didn't listen to the radio, and I went to parochial schools. Moreover, my family was crazy, and one of the things that crazy families do is turn inwards.
Until I went to college, I had never been outside my parent's house for longer than a week at a time, and those rare occasions were always church camp. True, I was in a cabin with age-mates, but my parents were over in the cabins for adults, so I'm not sure that counts. When I decided to go see "All That Jazz" as a part of my 18th birthday celebration, my parents had cows. We had an hour long argument (in front of my friends, mostly) about whether or not it was appropriate and Christian for me to go to an R-rated movie. It was the second R rated movie I had ever been to. Somehow, I managed to go see "The Deerhunter" when I was 15.
I don't know how to explain how innocent and how cynical I was when I finally escaped to the World. Wait, try this: the closest I'd ever gotten to the real world before I went to college was the SCA.