03 July, 2007

Corruption of a minor*

Up until now S has been satisfied with a very abstract description of where babies come from. Sperm meets egg, cell divides, etc. But last week he suddenly wanted to know how the sperm gets to the egg. So I told him that it's produced in the man's body and comes out of the penis. Gave a quick overview of the female anatomy, what really happens, and so forth.

And then he asked what sperm look like and B said "a radish".

Which cracked me up. He's right, of course, when you think away the leaves and the rest of the plant, but still! It isn't exactly the first shape that comes to mind!

So then, being the hip, wired-up parent that I am I said: "Well, why don't we look it up?" and Altavista'ed "sperm" with an image search. Which led to a page with a warning saying that the results of this search are classified as adult content. Could I please confirm that I am over 18 and check a box saying I accept the conditions listed.

And I was so annoyed-- isn't that typical for a parental control function to block information about anything having to do with reproduction! I was even considering blogging about the prudish nature of Internet filters and how they block out the good along with the bad. So I clicked on "accept"...

And, of course, gave us all an eyeful of hard core porn....

I couldn't click away fast enough! S looked at me with raised eyebrows: "WHAT WAS THAT?!" and I just said "Not what we were looking for" and changed the subject.

Greeeeeaaaaat.

I can just imagine S 20 years from now drinking beer with his buddies and confiding that his mother introduced him to porn at the tender age of seven...

*apologies in advance to CC and CH because I cherrypicked this masterpiece from a couple of e-mails I sent last week. Just honing my cut-and-paste skills... :-P

7 comments:

Goofball said...

oh you're just such a bad mother!!! shame on you, hihi.

maybe next time wikipedia is just a little safer on its content??

Betsy said...

I know, I know! *groan*

The really ironic thing is that in a former life I was the webmaster for a website that gave tips on how to avoid porn. (and spam and other online irritations.)

BUT-- the other thing I learned from that job was that the parent's interaction with the kid is what makes all the difference. Since I was so nonchalant about the whole thing I don't think it even really registered with S.

In reality he probably won't even remember this incident. (until the day when he's old enough to surf by himself and gets ahold of this URL... ;-) )

Anonymous said...

images.google.com is also a good place for image searches, they cut out the most of the WTF stuff.

Great story :)

R. Duckie said...

A Radish! Who would have thought!

Brit Kim said...

glad to read that you didn't erase your Insafe days !! and yes - as long as mommy's there all's fine !! it's too funny - but guess you're absolutely rigth..your reaction counts more

Brit Kim said...

and latest Danish survey states that often mummies set the norms for ethics regarding use of internet and computers whereas daddies' the technical handyman :)

Anonymous said...

I'm still waiting to tell the story of how a swanky German hotel we were staying at somehow had a screw-up with the TV system such that our daughter was exposed to hardcore porn for several minutes while we weren't there. There was no blurring, no shut-off after one minute, nothing. I hesitate to tell the full story because I know that one day she will read my blog from start to finish and perhaps be reminded of the incident. She was about nine at the time, but as far as we can tell suffered no ill effects.