Wicked Wednesday: Condoms

By Gariey Sia (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The first time I saw a condom was when I was in junior high. You might be thinking, “Good – safe sex at an early age!” But you’d be wrong. I was actually having sex with my boyfriend at the time, and his truck was parked in our driveway. His friends decided to do something funny, and when we came out of the house later, the entire bed of his truck was overflowing with them – blown up to ridiculous sizes like balloons.

We weren’t using condoms when we had sex – nobody really did. I was on the pill, having been taken to Planned Parenthood by a friend so that an unplanned pregnancy wasn’t in my future.  Being on the pill was great – and what we considered safe sex.

As you might guess, this was a long time ago – the worst thing we had to worry about, really, was pregnancy. AIDS wasn’t a thing, and no one worried about diseases, exactly. We were young and invincible, and neither parents nor sex-ed classes in school talked about using condoms.  Neither really talked much about sex at all. I think I used a condom once or twice, but it was never a big deal. In high school I met my husband, and we’ve never had a need to use them.

The first time I saw condoms in a movie, it wasn’t in porn – it was in a movie called “Skin Deep.” They had glow-in-the-dark condoms, and there was a rather hilarious scene with two men fighting in the dark – kind of like light sabers with no Jedi wielding them.  At a few of the student-services fairs they had flavored condoms: chocolate, grape, vanilla, and, of course, banana.  I’ve always wondered if they were any good, and imagined them to be milder flavors of lube.

My kids know about condoms – sex ed covers them, and at home we’ve talked a lot about using them. It’s a different time, and I know when they’re ready to have sex, they won’t be afraid to ask for them, or to use them. And that’s a very good thing.

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