Ask Lemmy

I had to learn that stuff on the street

by which I mean the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1994 edition.

My dad taught me to be a freak in the sheets.

Excel sheets, to be precise.

I was 18 or 19 when my dad scared me straight into learning to drive manual transmission.

I was 12 when my dad gave me the talk (the talk about how police will kill you if you aren't exceptionally polite to them). How having skin our color is very dangerous because police are afraid of us. So no quick movements.

Don't remember the specific age, but it was something in the vein:

"We gotta talk. You know about the sex stuff?"

"Yeah, no problem. Got the internet. Already a master or better."

"Eyyyyy!"

"Eyyyyy!"

And that was it. But seriously, the internet taught me more than biology class, without all the hoops and whistles.

First girlfriend. Was 16 or so. Was coming home from seeing her, walking through the garage with a big dumb smile on my face.

My dad, without even turning to look at me just says;

"Don't be bringin' no babies home."

And that, as they say, was that.

Why is OP shaming sex education?

The lack of proper sex education and making kids feel embarrassed about themselves is one of the main reasons why we have so many issues about sexuality and awareness. Not to mention unwanted pregnancies and STI's.

Next he's going to say that Albert Speer deserved more leniency for testifying because his testimony made it easier to convict the others.

Never.

My parents at the time were religious conservatives, and authority was expected to be followed. He did say that members of their religious organization had served as Nazis, because they had been drafted by their government, and that it was morally correct for them to have served their country, just as it was morally correct for American members of their church to also serve their country, and for both of these people to try their level best to kill each other at the behest of their respective countries. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."

It wasn't until I had a nervous breakdown in my very early 20s--due in large part to the extreme cognitive dissonance caused by membership in that religious organization--that I started to seriously question authority.

Dad? What's a dad? Jokes aside, I was educated by the internet ... I wouldn't really trust my parents with any of that information.

Figured it out on my own somehow pretty early.. being a Jew in the 80s, people still remembered and it mattered. You knew people with numbers on their arms.

My son has understood since 1st grade. He watched X-Men 97 and jumped up saying the fascists attacking mutants were like Nazis and the Holocaust.

We talk about our family military history on both sides of the family, and their roles in WW2. I'm very proud to be an American taught to abhor injustice, and see it in my son's nature.

lemonparty.com

I was 14 when my dad sat me down and told me how to behave around cops.

Yeah, my parents never had any kind of talks with me.

I had an encyclopedia though.

Never did. I think we were still waiting for his dad to give him "the talk".

They've both passed now. :(

We had schools, teaching both about nazis and sex ed, because it's too important to leave up to whatever parent someone happened to get

Everything I needed to know I learnt from Microsoft Encarta.

My dad never gave me "the talk." It was my mother. According to her, when I was around 7-8 years old, she overheard one of my friends making crude remarks about having sex with women. And he didn't understand how a woman's biology worked, so he was extremely inaccurate in his description of the act.

My mother decided at that moment that I needed a lesson in how sex actually works, so she went out and bought an educational children's book about where babies come from. Then she sat me down and read through it with me.

Honestly, I kind of like the fact that I was taught so young. I was already mature for my age, and being taught before I was a ball of raging hormones meant that I could comprehend it from an educational standpoint and not a "what's wrong with my body/I need to get laid" mindset.

My school didn't teach sex education until 8th grade. By then, everyone was horny as hell and making poor decisions. Because I already understood how it all works (and no one wanted to ask our teacher all the embarrassing questions), I ended up being a bit of a relationship counselor for my friends.

What is "the talk"? Next time, write the question more clearly...

I grew up in a conservative christian household. "The talk" basically amounted to "Keep it in your pants until you're married. You can figure things out then."

UK here. I don't remember ever getting "the talk" from either parent. There might have been a late attempt that was shut down with "ugh, we learned it all at school already."

Those classes, at some point between 9 and 13, might have cleared up a few school-yard rumours, but I'm really not sure what I knew, what I thought I knew, and what I learned (and unlearned) at that time. It might even have been a year-long, once a week class, but it was a very long time ago now. I don't even remember what the lessons were called, because it wasn't "sex ed". Might have been "Health Studies" or something similarly vague.

As for the subversion of expectation in the OP text, I'm pretty sure we had some lessons on WWII, but I don't think we got into that much detail before I chose to stop studying History. My parents and grandparents certainly talked about the wars, but that was more about them and people they knew during that time rather than the geopolitical and ethical aspects of things. Perhaps a mention of Nazi propaganda from Lord Haw-Haw being on the radio.

Quantum mechanics and all variations of analytical calculus were banned in my house growing up. I had to discover these things on my own by questioning the reality I experience with the errors in classical calculations I had been taught to make.

My dad gave me a Hustler magazine at 13 and called it a day. Thank my state government for having sex ed in schools, that shit was wild (but also I had porn on the Internet since 10 so not that wild).

Edit: to be fair, Hustler magazine has plenty about obedience and authority.

My mom was taking undergrad classes when I was in highschool. She thought it was interesting, and we discussed it.