Craig Daily Press

Christina M. Currie

Christina M. Currie's Touch of Spice column appears Fridays in the Craig Daily Press. E-mail her at director@craig-chamber.com

The job description for a parent includes occupational titles such as nurse, counselor, teacher, housekeeper, cook, caregiver, personal shopper, stylist, chauffer, law enforcement officer, scientist, comforter and many, many more.

The problem is that if I were any good at any of these, I would have made a career out of them.

As it is, I’m struggling to look like a professional in several fields that I know absolutely nothing about.

We’re talking about fields that require extensive education and certifications. I don’t think I’m qualified to claim any of those titles just by virtue of being a parent.

Yet, I must because I am a parent and I’m learning that children will test your knowledge of these subjects extensively.

At first, you feel like you’re more than up to the challenge. Injuries are healed with kisses, lessons are in basic safety and skills you’ve long since mastered and food comes prepacked in little jars.

It lulls you into a state of complacency.

And, as you’re floating along, confident in the knowledge that you’re not just doing your job, you’re doing a damn fine job, you hear, “Do you have sex?”

You sharply inhale, lodging your tongue halfway down your throat, cough and choke, shift your eyes to the sky and back to the ground, fight an almost uncontrollable urge to say, “of course not!” and take the easiest way out you can find.

“Why do you ask?”

You sort of care what the answer is, but mostly you’re just buying time.

In my defense, what I really want to ask is “Do you want a pony?”

I didn’t actually have the option to do either. My 6-year-old daughter didn’t actually even ask me. She asked someone else.

Could I be any more mortified?

So at bedtime, I bravely said, “I heard you asked about sex and want to know what you think sex is?”

I was stalling in hope that I would have a stroke of brilliance in the face of the discussion I knew was to come.

Nikki didn’t have a clue, but knew she wanted one.

“Tell me about it, Mom,” she said guilelessly.

“Well, when a man and a woman … like hugging … um, when two people love each other … adults sort of … there’s touching …”

I can’t tell you exactly how I responded other than the fact that I must have said the words “adult” and “private” a dozen times.

“So it’s like hugging?” Nikki asked.

“Um, sort of, but there’s more. It’s bigger,” I said.

“Oh! Like a group hug?”

So, how about that pony?

“It’s when you don’t have any clothes on,” Nikki added, with a slight twinkle in her eye.

I had a similar conversation with 7-year-old Katie. Having practiced once didn’t improve my delivery.

I’m generally honest with my children when it comes to tough subjects. This was just one of those subjects that I didn’t know where to begin, where to end or what to do in between.

So I turned to the expert. I brought up the Google home page and typed in “talking to your 6-year-old about sex.”

Armed with a number of diverse opinions, but what very slightly resembled a game plan, I decided to tackle the sex talk again. I was vague, but honest and mostly reiterated the fact that there was nothing to be embarrassed about (Katie said she was too shy to talk about it) and that they could talk to me about anything or ask me questions anytime (I wanted to include a caveat that all questions must be submitted in writing and turnaround time may take up to 48 hours — some answers really depend on how fast I can get to a computer).

It actually wasn’t much of a conversation.

It was a whole day later and frankly, they’d already lost interest in the subject I had been stressing over for nearly 24 hours.

I figure that was purposeful. I bet they feel that they’re not challenging my skills if they’ve given me enough time to arm myself with all the advice the Internet has to offer.

In my list of parental jobs, did I mention emergency responder?