Even toy makers subject us to jaundiced stereotypes of men and women and their impending sexuality. Case in point is exhibitied with plastic doll makers. All women have hourglass figures and neutron bomb breasts, ready to poke an eye out if you handle them incorrectly. GI Joe and Ken are basically built the same, but Joe seems to be a little more macho and a little less pruned by a queer make-over artist, which in turn makes him the actual "macho man" of the two. In kindergarten, my sister gave me a tiny suitcase filled with Ken and Barbie and all of their various clothes and accessories. She said, "Here, take this. It will be fun." "What about GI Joe?" I asked. "What about him?" "Can I take Joe?" "Alright, I guess," she said and tucked him into the small wooden box with Barbie and Ken and Barbie and Ken's clothes. All GI Joe had was his rifle and his gun. One was for fighting and one was for fun. So, Joe got to come along to school with Barbie and Ken, bouncing around in the case. Ken and Barbie had special straps to hold them in place, like a roller coaster ride. Joe, on the other hand, was tossed on his head several times. It was okay, though, because Joe could take it. I got to Kindergarten and put it on the shelf beside my lunch and went about my day, doing Kindergarten things and waiting for recess. The teacher had laid large strips of paper across our tables and we spent a good part of the morning gathered around our group's table coloring on the paper and talking about anything we could think about, which was usually what toys everyone did or didn't have. About halfway through the morning, the teach asked a trivia question about something she had talked about during the morning. If someone answered her trivia question correclty, they were allowed to sit on one of the four beanbags during story time. I was usually busy talking to someone, so I rarely knew the answers to her questions. Instead, I got to lay on the hard carpeted floor with Karen and Stacey Goldman, who also missed their questions. We'd lay down and whisper things between each other, giggling, and often getting told to quiet down by the teacher. Sometimes we'd just get split apart until show and tell. I raised my hand, waiting for Mrs. Greer to pick me for show and tell, she playtime, when we came together again and got all wound up. During playtime, Eric Butler, who also sat at our table, and Joey Burton joined us while we played with Tinkertoys or Wooden Blocks. After awhile, Karen suggested I get my wooden box off the shelf and we'd play with whatever

Every Story Must Begin

And so should this one. Imagine a small suburban town with small 3 bedroom ranch houses and two-car avenues going from one end of the town to the other. The city is Reynoldsburg, Ohio and the year was 1979. Bryan and Billy Barrett lived on the far end of Huber, near the city swimming pool. Their backyard opened out into Huber Park and once Memorial Day came around, Bryan and Billy would hop on their Huffy Black Thunders with yellow five-spoked plastic wheels and travel throughout Reynoldsburg's back streets.

I'd just learned to ride a bike that spring and was still a little unsure of myself. I coasted my mountain bike down Retton Road on the long, sloping hill leading into Huber Park. I stopped awkwardly, nearly wrecking, but quickly found my balance and turned right at the intersection with Haft Drive. From there, I headed up Haft to the Barrett's house, which was a short way from the intersection.

As I arrived at their house, I dropped my bike in their front yard and banged on the aluminum frame of the front door. Bryan's older brother Billy answered the door and invited me into their house. Bryan had taken his bike down to the barber shop for a haircut and would be back in half an hour or so.

Billy and I hung around a lot in grade school because of my friendship with Bryan. We had become good friends in the summer between elementary school and middle school. Bryan and I would hang out with Billy and his friends, who were all a couple of years older than we were, so we tagged along whenever possible.

Billy collected stamps and coins, which was a weird hobby, considering he played Youth Football in the Autumn and Youth Baseball in the Spring. It just didn't seem like something that would interest him. He pulled out a few photo albums and I flipped through them. He pointed out first issues, internaional stamps, blocks of four stamps, unused booklets, and first day covers. All in all, it seemed pretty boring to me, but I guess Billy probably thought the same about Bryan's comic book collection, too.

After a short while, Billy offered me a glass of Kool-aid and chips and we played ColecoVision in the living room while we waited for Bryan. It wasn't long after we started playing that the front door banged and Bryan joined us in the living room.

More Fun With Porn

It always begins like this:

One day, Mike and Jeff Merrick had stumbled upon a large stash of nudie magazines in Huber Park while riding their bikes to the swimming pool. They had gone biking along one of the back trails when Mike had noticed the magazines peeking through the bushes while he biked down the trail. He stopped and got a better look.

As he dug through the weeds, he soon realized that the flesh tones were something more than "just another magazine." There were several magazines all of types. Swedish Roll was the name of the only magazine I can remember, and it featured
a lot of blondes in a variety of clothes and a variety of poses. They were all being helped about by a man and his paintbrush. For some reason, they were also eating ice cream. I guess reality really isnt a factor in Swedish porn.

Needless to say, they missed their mouths and the scoops of ice cream fell onto the young Swedish girls breasts. Hurrah! Who said playing with your food isn't a whole heck of a lot of fun?

Mike and Jeff looked at the magazines for a few minutes, then left for the Swimming Pool. As soon as they arrived at the Pool, Mike and Jeff found me and Mike began talking about the magazines.

"Why didn't you bring it?" I asked.
"I don't know. I didn't think of it."
"Let's go back and look!"
"Okay. Jeff, you wanna go?"
Jeff shook his head. He liked nudity, but thought it was all non-sense. Lucky for me, Mike liked porn.

We jumped on our mountain bikes and rode back to the scene of the grime. There they sat, in all their glory. We sat there for a few hours, looking through the magazines. Just before dark, Jeff rode up with a few friends. He hadn't planned on showing anyone the stash, but everyone jumped off their bikes and dug in. Soon, magazines were ripped apart, page by page. Pages were folded into tiny squares and tucked into jean pockets. I took the blonde painter with the ice cream dropping problems and folded her picture in a neat rectangle. Unfortunately, I didnt have any place to put her, so I tucked her between my left shin and my white athletic sock. I thought about her naked breasts as I pedalled up Bartlett Hill on my way home.

As soon as I arrived home, I threw my black and yellow Huffy on the ground and ran inside. I went into the restroom and locked the door behind me. I reached into my sock and peeled the thin folds of paper off the face of my shin. It peeled away gently. I opened it up and looked at it. The model's name was Racquel Jorgensen. A thin crease ran across her waist, just above her belly button. I stood up and pressed the picture flat against the bathroom wall, then I ran it over the edge of the sink, trying to fix the creases in the page.

It was no use. I couldnt fix what my own sweat had done. I looked at Racquel with awe. It was the first porn I ever owned. But where should I hide it?

Just then, my sister knocked on the bathroom door.
"Hurry up!" she shouted. Without thinking, I tucked the picture behind the upright portion of the toilet basin and pretended to finish up going to the restroom. I flushed the toilet and washed my hands before coming out.

That little nook became Racquel's personal hideout. I pulled her out and looked at her a bit while I pooped. Or peed. That entire summer, I peed sitting down. I didn't want to waste a minute with my girl Racquel. After each time we spent with each other, I took her picture and tucked it safely away. As school started, I forgot about Racquel altogether.

Sometime that winter, I reached behind the toilet and Racquel was gone. I never asked anyone where she went. I guess she moved out of town without leaving a forwarding address.

Are You Experienced?

There is a fine line between being a slut and being a really friendly person. The problem for women is that number for men is much higher than women. The problem for men is that there just aren't enough really friendly girls and far too few sluts.

Of course, there are girls who are neither but get credit for both.

Case in point: Gina Cherry. Being stuck with a name like "Cherry" certainly dooms you from the start. One of the most memorable things about Gina was her progressive puberty at age 11. She was a prominent girl in our sixth grade class. A new move only a few years earlier, Gina already had things to deal with: namely moving to a new school and having to make the change. I remember her most for her pink turtleneck sweaters.

Those sweaters haunted her in several ways throughout her grade school career. In sixth grade, her breasts were large and perky. Boys took notice of Gina long before other girls. She was a naturally bigger girl, so her breasts seemed to have a head start in the first place. When she was older, she dated several of the wrong boys. She was a good Catholic girl and never let boys "cross the line", but she did let them kiss her neck and give her the occasional hickey.

Poor Gina. Boys bragged about their skills at sucking to anyone who would listen. Poor Gina. Her last name was Cherry. A slew of phrases linking "Cherry" to her past time and talking about who did what (most were lies). And where they did it.

On the other end of the scale was Ted Pentz. Ted was definitely a slut. It didn't matter if he was a guy or not. Everyone knew he was a slut. The worst of sluts. He often took polaroids of his exploits and passed them about.

More Oral Sex Than You Can
Stick Your Tongue Out At

My grandmother was never fond of talking about sex that much, but the rest of our family is sick and twisted, so it eventually came up as a topic of dicussion one thanksgiving.

Somehow, I had said something about sex, then tried to cover it up by pretending to be chaiste. My aunt pointed out that she didn't believe me. I just replied that I didn't want to talk about how much I did or didn't like oral sex in front of my relatives at a dinner table while eating mashed potatoes and gravy.

My sister Angie, spoke up. "Oh god yes, oral sex is great."

Grandma made a face like she had passed a painful load of gas and shook her head in disgust. "I'm not disagreeing with you there, sis. Oral sex is great. Don't you think so, grandma?" I replied.

"That's digusting!" she shouted at me, continuing to contort her face into new wrinkly positions I had never seen before. Ang and I kept on prodding grandma to make more faces, letting us know that were most possibly not her offspring.

Even if my sister Angie and I are grandmother's offspring (which I've been assured we are), it wasn't because of foreplay. In her day, there didn't have foreplay. Theye didn't need it. In her day, men seldom saw women naked, and sex wasn't something gross and perverted. It was something to be cherished and preserved. In her day, they walked barefooted uphill to and from all sex acts in four feet of snow.

Aunt Joyce looked at us and started laughing uncontrollably. A big heap of mashed potatoes came shooting out her nose as she cupped her mouth with her hand. Right then and there, I think grandma realized that talking about oral sex at thanksgiving isn't as gross as having a relative spew a mashed potato-snot mix all over the holiday dinner table.

We had ham sandwiches for dinner that year.

Sticky Keys

The internet is a sick an twisted place, which illustrates the world is a sick and twisted place itself.

My nephew has explored the internet and all of it's wily ways. How do I know this? Well, actually, me and his mom (my goofy sister) were cleaning the cookies file out of her internet folder when she was giving her old computer to our mother.

There was a list of about fifty or sixty different pornographic websites with "jacob@sextracker.com" or "jacobp@hornycollegegirls.com" His mom didn't think Jacob's grandmother (our mom) needed to run into that one day. I mean, we all know that everyone is pretty perverted, but to get a confirmation on it isn't exactly the most pleasant thing in the world.

I decided to do some research for this story, so I went to several porno sites. The scariest was "bestiality.com" where they put the doggy in doggy style. And elephant style, and horsey style and...well you get the point.

These are the pictures that dispell all of the urban legends. The woman with her dog and the peanut butter? Oh, it happened. The farmer in the dell? Oh, it happened.

I guess it could be worse. My niece could have an online screenname like, "loves69alot." Actually she does, and the topper is that she is only fifteen years old. She doesn't act the type. Just like Vaughn Lombardo and my big brother aren't chronic masturbators.

Still, I worry that many males will be more likely to page "loves69alot" rather than a name like "younggirlwhoabstainsalot" with requests for phone numbers and naked pictures. I am just glad she told me her name before I did something that caused both of us to become regular visitors to the therapist.

On another note, the allure of internet porn has always been lost on me. I mean, I don't cringe away in fear. It's more like I drive by a porn link slowly, as if there were fifteen ambulances parked alongside the virtual highway. Usually Britney Spears or Jennifer Lopez or Pamela Anderson pages me and says: "Hey cutie! Cum see me naked on my webpage at: ." I fall for it only about half the time now.

But, with all this said, the internet does have its plusses. I don't think my grandma has ever had imaginary sex with someone from the pacific islands. I, on the other hand, might have.

More Masturbation Stories

Maybe it is a little known fact, but girls give handjobs like monkeys bowl, which is not very good at all. Guys are well aware of this. It's hard to tell if it is a conspiracy to work less by women. This also falls under the "things guys hate that girls do" list that was written by some classmates in tenth grade health class. Chris Ettrich wrote down "Girls who rake." All the guys laughed, whether we had gotten blow jobs in our lives or not.

After we were finished making our lists, Mr. Anderson collected our list and read it out loud and stumbled over "girls who rake" And then he got it. He acted like he was perturbed, but he flashed that Roger Anderson grin that said "jesus guys, use some couth."

GIrls are also under the impression that they all give good oral sex. This is usually related to the fact that their boyfriends usually don't complain about raking at any time, for fear that a monkey bowling is better than no monkey at all.

These girls start "bowling like monkeys," doing this, that, and the other thing. All of which are NOT THE CORRECT thing. I'm not telling women to stop. I'm telling women to be a little more careful down there.

Even though guys rip their manpart around like they want to jerk it off, trust me ladies. They do not. Men give their penises pet names. Women don't do this. And if they do, that's just because they have been taught it by a sad, sad society.

All I am asking is that women understand the penis.

It has one goal in life, and women, you are that goal. If the penis was a general, we'd all have one flag in this world. We'd have a world anthem, and we'd have 45,000 first ladies.

Anyway, I have also found that the safe limit for masturbation falls somewhere between 17 and 18 times a day, and no more than 116 times in a one week span. Even that is pushing it. (or pulling it rather) and the red rashes and rub-marks are sure signs that you need to pace yourself. The average man lives about 80 years. That could be as many as 525,600 "events." Does that sound safe for any activity, let alone self-molestation?

This is all well and good, but sometimes this much masturbation can be disturbing. Case in point: Billy Noddingham. He was a greasy little kid in one of my sixth grade classes. We all called him Rotting Ham and the real mess in all of this is the fact that during another field trip, he was the object of personal disgrace.

During our sixth grade year, we went to Camp Willson in Bellefontaine, Ohio. The boys slept in Pettigrew Hall, which was a big amptheatre building with adjacent rooms and bunk beds. There was one bathroom in Pettigrew Hall and whenever someone had to go to the restroom, they had to stumble in the dark or turn on the lights in one of the rooms.

Sometime during the night, Steve Rose got up to take a pee and he turned on the overhead lights in our room in Pettigrew Hall. Rotting Ham was laying on top of his bunk, jackhammering away at his manpart, for all to see. It was the big story the next day at breakfast. By noon, Rotting Ham was gone from camp. Within a few weeks, he was gone from our lives for good, but his legacy lives on.

The Other Way
Of Stopping

Greg Blaine was the first of my friends that I can remember truly having a girlfriend. I am sure he doesn't want me to bring this up, but her name was Diane Schulberg and these were different times anyway. We all have changed, and we are glad for it.

Diane Schottenstein was a little Jewish girl with a big nose who had a locker between me and Scott Schmid in eighth grade. I don't remember her much beyond that. She and Greg dated for a while and both of them seemed happy, walking hand-in-hand, but we were young and dumb then. Love was fun. There were less sperm and less babies and less periods.

To be honest, this story has nothing to do with Greg Blaine or Diane Schulberg. It's about a lot other people, actually. I will start with the Collins sisters and Jenny Cranes. They lived near me growing up and sometimes I hung out at their houses, talking about all sorts of stuff. I was friends with a different crowd then. A kid named Ryan Vance lived there about two blocks down Bartlett, next to Jenny Cranes and just over the fence from Mary and Marie Collins.

Jenny had gotten her period a few years earlier and we as boys didn't know what periods were. We knew girls got them and we didn't and now that we know what periods are, we are glad it took a long time for anyone to tell us about them.

We didn't make much of the whole puberty thing until it really hit. Jenny and Mary and Marie and Ryan and I played a game of spin the bottle. Ryan spun the bottle first and kissed Marie. Marie spun and then kissed Ryan. Ryan spun the bottle and got to kiss Mary. So far, this game really sucked.

Mary spun the bottle and it pointed toward me. She stretched over the bottle and kissed me. She had just been smoking and her kiss had this awful taste like grandma's cigarettes. I ignored it and kissed her back. We spun for a little while longer until finally, Mary came up with the idea of the spinners going off into the living room to kiss.

Mary spun the bottle and it landed in front of me. She got up again and we went into the living room and began making out. She was only about fourteen, but puberty was really generous to her. I put my hand on her blouse, this nylon number that felt itchy. Her bra was also one of those cantilevered industrial dealies, with the dark white cotton panel keeping everything in it's place. I went for the gusto and she pushed me away. We kissed a bit more, then returned to the extra room.

Mary spun the bottle and it landed in front of me. She got up again and we went into the living room and began making out. She was only about fourteen, but puberty was really generous to her. I put my hand on her blouse, this nylon number that felt itchy. Her bra was also one of those cantilevered industrial dealies, with the dark white cotton panel keeping everything in it's place. I went for the gusto and she pushed me away. We kissed a bit more, then returned to the extra room.

Mary spun the bottle, and it pointed to Jenny Cranes. We all laughed and then argued about how to solve this matter. Finally, the girls decided that Mary got to spin again. She spun and got Ryan. They made out for awhile, then came back into the living room. Ryan was smiling from ear to ear. "I get to spin again!" he said, then spun the bottle. It pointed to Jenny. They got up and went into the living room for several minutes. They came back and her shirt was untucked and unbuttoned down to the third button. She fixed herself up and spun again. It pointed to me.

We went into the living room and it was pretty much the same as before with Mary, with Jenny pushing me away. I whispered to her and then unbuttoned the top button and jammed my hand awkwardly down her pants. I found my way under the underwear and started fiddling around. I started fingering the crease between her thigh and her groin. For me, it was amazing, For Jenny, I can only assume it was anything but. She reached down and put my hand in the right place, then after a few seconds, rethought the whole proposition and pushed me away. We kissed some more and then returned to the living room.

I spun the bottle again and it pointed to Marie. She and I went into the living room and I began to kiss her. She pushed me away and we sat there for a few moments, not saying anything at all to each other. Finally, she motioned for me to get up and we returned to the living room.

We played for a few more rounds, then I was paired up with Mary again. Mary took me to the living room and as we began kissing, I attempted to push her onto her back. She resisted. Instead, she unbuttoned my pants and put her hand down there. I was "positioned" poorly in my pants and as she fiddled around, things sort of got jammed.

Mary tugged on my pants and tried again. Soon, her cupped hand was surrounding me. I kissed her as she held her hand on top of me. She moved it a bit and I felt a sharp pain. She pulled her hand up and made the worst face I have ever seen in my life. It was as if she had stuck her hand into a corpse and was forced to pull out the entrails.

Actually, it was just me, in all my glory, doing what boys do at fourteen years old. It seemed over very quickly. Over as quickly as it started. Mary wiped her hand off on the couch and immediately got up and went into the other room. I dressed myself and quickly followed.

I looked over to Ryan and Marie looked over to Mary and the party quickly just fizzled out. Ryan and I soon went back to his house and played Atari. He made me sniff his finger and we laughed about all sorts of things. We compared their kisses and their breasts and how easy they were or were not and how we wanted to do that again. And soon.

I think that time making out with Marry was the first time I had an orgasm. It was odd, because I hardly enjoyed it. I even said something to her. She just laughed at me, like she didn't know what I was talking about. To this day, I think girls play dumb to see how much we will believe them. It's not so clear who is dumb and who is dumber.

A few years later our Junior High went on a field trip to Washington D.C. One guy told everyone how he came while dancing with a girl on the dance floor. I remembered thinking how everyone laughed and how weird it was that boys just did it at that age with very little prompting. Now I am older, it isn't as easy.

They Say Masturbation
Makes You Blind

If I dont point this out, someone else will. I am legally blind. In middle school, thoughts of nurses and fourth grade teachers and Asian girls, and white girls and black girls and ugly girls and fat girls and old women and nuns filled my head as I did my best to go blind every day from about 1981-1984..

I found the Playboys in the stack of magazines next to my dad's recliner. He made no bones about hiding them, which made me happy, because I was twelve years old. I had a fondness for this girl named Marianne Gravatte. It's amazing I can still remember than name after twenty some years.

My brother wasn't much of a porn collector. The porn he did have was really gritty, though. A Penthouse and a Oui magazine. I actually think they were his friends, because he just didn't seem to lock himself in his bedroom that much. Not that I kept track of it. Really, I didn't. Give me some credit, okay?

Vaughn Lombardo lived behind us and he was about 4 years older than me and we were playing wiffle ball out in the back yard. Mother and father Lombardo were out and about and it was summer. We went inside for a drink of water and he showed me his Penthouse magazines. He said I couldn't tell anyone. The first thing I did was tell his little brother Victor. Victor told Vaughn and Vaughn laughed it off. He came back to me pretty mad, but
got over it pretty quickly. He never did show me any more porn though.

Victor stood by the fact that Vaughn wasn't that type of person. I am standing by my brother, too. Neither of them wear glasses. I, on the other hand, had a rich child hood and wear big pop-bottle bottom glasses. I still haven't gone totally blind.

An Asian Girl
In Suburban Ohio

Being somewhat of an aficionado of Asian girls, I thought I knew what I was talking about. The "what" in question was Joyce Choi. She lived next door to Mike Klein, just over a six foot tall fencerow bush, and she is, as far as I can remember, the first Asian girl I can remember. She was in my fourth grade reading class. In fact, she was in my third grade reading class, too, but I don't remember her from there.

Joyce is a slender Asian girl with all the typical Asian girl traits: long black hair, sorta slanted eyes, yellowish-beige skin, and very petite. Oh yeah, she was also really smart, so she fit the stereotypes quite well.

She played in band, too. She played the french horn. I played the trumpet. I sat next to Mike Smith, who also played trumpet. I hardly ever talked to Joyce. She had a crush on another of my friends, Mark Carpenter.

So fifth grade came and went. And then in sixth grade, there was another school and another teaching system: team teachers. Joyce was in the Bodi-Simonette-Adams group. I was in the Palmer-Whitlatch-Lumbley group. These two teams did meet up for gym class, however.

Jeff Merritt was in the Bodi group, so we hung out while we waited for Mr. Welsh to make up his mind about what to do with us next. Gina Lemon and Joyce Choi were also in the class. Gina was in Mrs. Palmer's homeroom like I was, and we had bonded casually as I borrowed pencils and paper from her. And sometimes even school books when I couldn't find mine.

Gina still had a crush on Jeff from fifth grade, while I still had a crush on Joyce. Neither of us really did anything about it until the last day of sixth grade. Gina passed me a note, telling me to send it on to Jeff. He read it and reacted pretty much in the Jeff Merritt way: "Girls are crazy. I have to do somehting else. Thanks for thinking of me, though. Goodbye."

In return, Gina took a white t-shirt into the girl's locker room for Joyce to sign. She left a cute little note about how cute or how swell, or how much I didn't talk to her on the t-shirt. Eventually, Scott Herd wrote THE HERD over her signature.

At that time, I didn't know Scott Herd, he just hung out with people I knew. I thought his name was Herb until late in my ninth grade year. He never corrected me. I don't know if he realized I didn't even know his name, anyway.

So Joyce signed my shirt and that was about it. I had opportunities to talk to her, but never said anything. I barely saw her through the rest of Middle School and Junior High. In High School, our paths were so disparate that we only saw each other fleetingly during first period when she was in the bookstore and I was in the halls during Journalism class, making my way to the bookstore to get a morning doughnut.

In college, she went to pre-med at Ohio State. She lived down the street from another friend, Scott Davis. During one of his parties, Mike Butler and I strolled down to a place she was sharing with a few of her high school friends, Emily Damron and Jody Hedrick. She looked amazing that night, too. She was busy hitting on some guy who I had never met and was fawning over him. Mike had a crush on a girl back at Scott's party, so we returned there and that is the last time I saw her.

It Can Also End a Sentence

And so it was for Heidi Gellner, who sat in Mr. Canter's choir class with her white pants singing "One" from the muscial "Chorus Line."

One...singular sensation.

Heidi knew what was about to happen, but she pinched her knees together and hoped she could just get through the song and make it the last ten minutes of class.

Every little move she makes.

The bubbling and gurgling was outdoing her. Heidi closed her eyes and prayed to the puberty godes to let her make it only ten more stinkin' minutes, so she could make her way to the safety of the girl's restroom and solve her problem.

One, thrilling combination, every little step she takes.

She raised her hand halfway through the song, tryinig to flag Mr. Canter down before it was too late. The class kept on singing and the gurgling in Heidi's tummy got worse and worse, creeping lower in her tummy.

Heidi did not make it ten more minutes. She didn't even make it one more minute. She got up and ran out of class, dodging the second row of chairs in the classroom. Her pants were stained in reddish-pink "ut-oh" spot, starting at her own private idaho.

Children pointed and laughed that day, too. That is just the way with ten-year olds. That is just the way with eleven-year olds. That is just the way with people of all ages. We laugh because we are thrilled it didn't happen to us. At least not today.

Fifth Grade Teachers
In Nurse's Outfits

The first sexual experience any young boy has is always the same.

And so it was for Brian Rose too. Mrs. Draper called Brian up in front of the class to give his book report on "John F. Kennedy: A Boy's Life." Why would I remember something that happened over a generation ago when I can't remember what book I read myself? Read on, you'll see for yourself.

What I do remember is this: half way through the report, something happened in the middle of Brian's pants. If your first guess is that he peed himself, you're wrong. He could only be so lucky. Instead, he was afflicted with "horrible erectus."

And no amount of clever hand gestures trying to direct attention from his zipper to points away from his zipper will distract a group of eleven year old children. None. What does work? Listen up and you'll find out.

Well, come to think of it, I also ended up thinking about Joyce Choi, Denise Kostora, Gina Lemon, and Monica Welch, who all conveniently sat in the front row of class.

My hand swept back and forth as I approached the front of the class, a lone signalman trying to get everyone to look up to the clock above my head, the chalkboard behind me, out the window, or even to the blackheads which some day might have been zits.

But it was no use. Joyce Choi was the first to notice, giggling and whispering something over to Denise. The wave of anxious hormones slowly made its way across the front row and throughout the entire class.

I am not sure where my mind went from there. I do remember to make things worse was this bad habit I had picked up from Charlie Hough the year before.

For those of you uneducated in Los Angeles Dodgers pitching staff of the late 70s, Charlie Hough was a left-handed pitcher who was one of my favorite pitchers. Like all pitchers, he had a penchant for adjusting himself in front of the nation. For the lack of any better alibis, I will blame him.

I had rubbed a light blue spot on the left side of my zipper where I had constantly pushed Bullwinkle from one side to the other in my tight denim pants. This was a runway for disaster in front of a class of my esteemed peers.

I began to give my speech on J.F.K., but I was obviously distracted... and as I thought about J.F.K. and horny nurses, I began to think of Marilyn Monroe dressed as a nurse singing "Happy Birthday Mr. President" to J.F.K. Joyce was giggling. Denise was giggling. In fact, the enitre class was giggling at this point, because my maleness had become a little more noticable, and as I tried to correct the incorrectness of this inadequacy (face it, I was only 11 years old), I swept my arm back and forth, trying to move it into a more suitable position.

I moved Bullwinkle to the left. I moved him to the right. After two attempts, I left him alone altogether (watch while I try to pull this rabbit out of my hat!)

This obviously made things worse. I had no idea what to do. Mrs. Dray asked me a question, trying in vain to divert the classroom's attention. Finally, I did what I should have done in the first place. As tears began to well up, I faked choking. My face turned beet red and Monica turned to Mrs. Dray and said, "Mrs. Dray, I think Nick is choking." Suddenly, the class quieted down as Mrs. Dray escorted me to the water fountain.

"Are you okay, Nick?" she asked. I nodded to her, but continued to force the choking reaction, and I wasn't even sure what she thought about my charade, but I didn't care at the point. I was just glad to get out of that situation unscathed.

"You can just stay out here until you feel better." She walked back into the room and the reports were continuing on as I reentered the room. I eased to my seat as everyone watched. I smiled to Monica, who didn't know how much she helped me.

Nothing more was said about the "bent flagpole incident." All guys go through this at one point or another. And at one point or another, the girls in class giggle at a boy in the dangerous position of reaching puberty. Or guys giggle at a girl in the dangerous position of reaching puberty.