(Why risk your child’s innocence on the dubious information in the world’s most popular reference volume when the only reference book he needs is already sitting on the shelf next to the wedding photo?)

The minutia and special interests involved in the sex-ed in public schools debate are myriad and complicated, especially because some people’s heads have been so crushed by their own colons they can’t see past their own polyps. But you’d think this Foucalt’s Pendulum of a debate would have found a position somewhere closer to middle ground than the evidence over the last couple of days seems to want to indicate. We seem stagnated at the opposite ends of  “don’t tell the nine-year-old he grew out of his mom’s carrot patch” and “don’t fuck the nine year old to show him what anal sex is like.” A couple of U.S. towns aren’t even ready to decide if condoms should be referred to as “contraceptives” or “receptacles for angels’ tears,” as evidenced by the following stories.

First we go to Texas (Jesus Taintlicking Christ, Texas of all places), where a woman named Shirley Price, who overcame physical disabilities now sits on the Hitchcock school board with a doctorate, was asked to give a motivational speech at a school about over coming odds or some ghey shit like that. Instead, she asked the principal to leave the room, and the kids got treated to this:

What was supposed to be a motivation speech to a collection of sixth- through eighth-grade girls at Crosby Middle School instead turned into an explicit sex talk, including descriptions on how to perform oral and anal sex, [and several curse words] Hitchcock school officials said.

First of all, what do you mean by curse words? I understand the… Galveston County Daily News is a publication of some merit, and wouldn’t want to taint its pages with naughty words, but you live in a state in which “intercourse” is a curse word, so I’m going to need a little clarification. Also, I think if you really thought about it, Ms. Price’s speech came from a very honest and helpful place. If college taught me anything, it’s that crippled chicks totally do anal, at first because they can’t get away, but eventually they begin to love human connection that isn’t from a 90 year old doctor’s rubber glove and they get attached to it. Especially when they realize that certain concessions are the only thing between anyone seeing the point in touching them and the oblivion of numb loneliness, a factor which becomes more important depending on how annoying being home schooled and taking your mom to “living room prom” has made her personality. So the service Shirley Price was providing to the children was letting them know that overcoming adversity and becoming a functioning member of society against all odds can often be expedited with a little Anal-Eaze. And there is definitely a sliding scale in these situations; the worse off they are the farther they’ll go. When I was in high school, Terry Schiavo came to do a motivational speech. She didn’t say much, but you could tell she wanted to teach us about donkey punching.

Students apparently were told to keep the contents of the speech secret, [Hitchcock Superintendent Mike] Bergman said.

Are you sure we’re not confusing the Price case with the People vs. Clown-Priest Handing Out Candy and Cigarettes From The Back of a Panel Van With Big Bird Painted On the Side? Nobody with half a brain thinks that abstinence-only sex-ed is the perfect way to go, but Price’s approach was certainly extreme, especially considering it wasn’t even supposed to be sex-ed. Probably, she is of the mind-set (the same I employ in my own life) that every day of her life is sex-ed day, and whoever wants to gather ’round the mound is welcome to benefit from her vast knowledge of things like how to properly perform a Jelly Donut. But Price’s real mistake here was not realizing that if you tell a room-full of kids not to tell their parents about something, at least one of them is going to be smart enough to do exactly that. It was a hard lesson, but I learned it early. Hey, bubba.

“There was no motivational speech at all,” Bergman said.

Says you. I can think of a few things I’m motivated to do right now. But the extreme nature of that case can only be matched by the sphincter stretching dick-lickery coming out of Southern California, who banned The Merriam-Webster Dictionary in its public schools for including the definition of “oral sex.”

Merriam Webster’s 10th edition, which has been used for the past few years in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (for children aged nine to 10) in Menifee Union school district, has been pulled from shelves over fears that the “sexually graphic” entry is “just not age appropriate”, according to the area’s local paper.

Damn! What was the definition of oral sex, “Noun: Kissing and licking a cock, cunt, or ass-hole for the purposes of giving pleasure, with the hope of receiving monetary compensation and a face full of white leak”? Or was it the example sentence, “Susie gave a different boy oral sex on the school bus every day, because collecting colored bracelets is so rad, and the best way to be popular”?

The dictionary’s online definition of the term is “oral stimulation of the genitals”.

Burn it! I can’t tell what is more offensive and less age appropriate, “genitals” or “stimulation.” Come spelling bee time, the class clown is going home with the gold star for that 4-syllable gem. Clearly the parents of these kids don’t remember what it was like to have the classmate in the school yard talking about the shit he found under his older brother’s bed, and not even having a rudimentary understanding of what was being said. It doesn’t make for a good time, I’ll tell you what. Apparently, “age appropriate” to them means when he’s fumbling around under his prom date’s dress to find the bra strap and ends up kneeing her in the face in an incredibly embarrassing and totally avoidable tugging accident.

“It’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature,” district spokeswoman Betti Cadmus told the paper.

Good. While your wrinkly, bespectacled ass is pouring over a book that’s almost harder to get through than A Tale of Two Cities looking for dirty words like “penis”, the rest of us will be having oral sex. Isn’t there some Bingo you could be losing right now? Do your grand-kids have enough home-made cookies? Whatever, it will keep your swirling vagina sand out of other people’s eyes for a few days so I say go for it. The thing is already banned, what more damage can you do? Just do me a favor and try to keep something in mind as you turn each delicate page of that reference book: when you were a kid, what motivated you to really learn how you use the dictionary? My guess is “dick.”