A rant you should steer clear of if you are at all uncomfortable with male anatomy (just like everyone at my university apparently)

First of all, I should say that me and my Children's Lit class don't always get along. Not just because I find myself making huge generalizations about a large percentage of the population (children) in order to answer any question in the class straightforwardly, but because I clearly come from a very different place than most of my classmates. I come from the ghetto. I come from a field of study where gender-bending literature is kind of the norm. I come from a Mennonite church. I come from a family of missionaries and ex-missionaries. Hell, I don't know where it comes from, but I come from a place where we don't constantly deny that penises exist.

Second of all, I would like to say something about penises. About half of the world's population has them. A large percentage of the other half of the population has had one inside of them at least once. They are referred to in a variety of ways every day: on the radio, in books, in movies, in t.v. shows. They are spray-painted on buildings. Any rod-like object has been likened to one at some point in time. Anyone who has seen the cinematic gem Superbad will have seen a variety of fascinating artistic interpretations of the penis and all that it stands for. Penises are real and they're everywhere, damn it!*

And yet today I found myself seated in a classroom full of 20-somethings who could not handle the mere suggestion of the word 'penis'. It was the discussion on puberty in literature. We divided into groups** and examined the classic 'growing body'-type texts that crop up in households when someone realizes that the only alternative is the dreaded Puberty Talk. Then we had to discuss whether or not these books were appropriate for children.

A girl held up a text aimed at adolescent boys and showed us a page with drawings that were 'really inappropriate'. She waved it around. Someone gasped. From my vantage point I could not make out what exactly had shocked them, so I asked what it was. There arose a surprising amount of giggling for a university classroom. The girl would not, could not, say what was on the page. She had to pass the book to me. People stared. People giggled. Someone handed me the book. I tried to open it so that the person across from me could see it, thinking she might actually want to join the class discussion, but she shook her head violently. I began to feel like quite the perverted creep, wanting to see this horrible thing that children should not read about. Nevertheless, I persevered in my misguided quest for the truth. I opened the book to the offending page.

The page was titled 'every boy is different'. It was a set of cartoon drawings of penises. Professionally flaccid penises. Penises of all shapes and sizes. Big penises, small penises, fat penises, thin penises, one that I would have thought was a bulbous nose if it weren't accompanied by two testicles. Ah. There it was, the shocking thing. Drawings of penises. In a book about male anatomy. The horror. And I was being either pitifully naive or very creepy for requesting to see this book about anatomy. In a class about anatomy.

These are the things I probably should have said:
"Where's the inappropriate drawing? All I see are drawings of penises in a book about penises."
Or
"Oh is it because all these penises clearly belong to white boys? This book is racist!" (hey, maybe that WAS why everyone was embarrassed)
Or
"If it's inappropriate for adolescent boys to see eachother's penises how come you're not protesting the open-air locker rooms a the YMCA?

In fact, I've decided to change the ending of this story. I looked at the page of penises. Then I said, "Yeah it's pretty offensive to see pictures of penises that aren't the size and length of my forearm. Thank God there's enough ads for internet porn that all these boys have probably seen what a proper penis looks like by now."
Everyone was shocked by my ability to use the word 'penis' in a sentence. They were aghast at my charmingly dirty sarcasm. Then they saw my point. They all nodded at my words of wisdom. Thus liberated from their body-shaming mindset, we decided that we should make our own book in response. We spent the rest of the class designing it. It is pop-up. It will be on bookstore shelves by May. Enjoy!

*What is more, they're pretty important. Where would we be without them? Half of the DNA that created each one of us came out of one. And think about urinals! If half of North America's population couldn't pee standing up, think how many more bathroom stalls we would need! Penises are space-savers. They can also be time-savers. Think how many more bathroom breaks would have to happen on car trips if certain members couldn't pee out the window (I kid. I can't think of any good that has come from a jet of urine shooting out of a car traveling at 100 km/hr).

**and I can give you a second (and much longer) rant on how much I hate group-work, so I was biased from the start. If I apologize enough for being judgmental no one can judge me, right?

Whining: A Way of Life

Whining is a very important part of my general existence. If I couldn't complain about every little thing in my life that goes wrong, I don't know what I'd do. I might take all that extra time on my hands and invent something truly awful, like a line of soaps that smelled like your favourite dinner. Surely there is a niche market for soaps that smell like garlic butter or turkey gravy, but I don't know if I want to be associated with those people.

The long and short of it is, complaining is important to me--important to the point that I will actually rearrange my daily schedule in order to fit complaining in. For instance, this morning, the first thing I thought of when I woke up was my need to complain to someone about what an awful sleep I'd had. It was actually the reason I got up; I could have slept in for a good hour more, but I was afraid that my parents would have left by then, and there's no satisfaction in complaining to the cats. I decided that I had enough time to brush my teeth before going to complain, but not enough time to make my bed. This caused me a twinge of anguish, because I generally can't leave my room happily unless my bed has been made. But today, I had been woken up at 4 o'clock in the morning by a friend who had gotten her Amys mixed up, and people needed to know about this*.

I went downstairs. The parents were both still in the dining room. Excellent. I had time to make myself breakfast, but I would have to go for cold cereal; making toast was too much of an involved process, and Mum and Dad could leave at any minute. Hurriedly I filled my cereal bowl, went back into the dining room, and sat down. I waited for a lull in the conversation. Then I began to complain. I had even planned an opening hook--"Julia got her Amys mixed up last night"--to trick my parents into thinking this was the beginning of an interesting story, instead of just a whining session.

Unfortunately, I had picked the wrong generation of people to complain to. One of the crucial differences between my parents' generation and my own is the likelihood that their cellphones will be on at any point in time. The only time when it's okay for a member of the Millenial generation to have his or her cellphone turned off is if they are at work. If he/she is sleeping, eating, showering, at a funeral, getting married, making passionate love to someone, or is otherwise busy, they probably have their phone on silent. Ergo, of course my cellphone would be on at 4am, and, unfortunately, since the ringer is automatically on Loud when it's plugged in to charge, the damned thing rang and woke me up.

I don't think Generation X has this problem, though. At least, Dad doesn't. After my whining was ended, he informed me that I should have just turned my cellphone off, and he had very little sympathy for me. Damn. I should have played up the "i'm still sick" angle of things. I should have explained that I had to leave my phone on because I was coughing so badly I was afraid I would have to call an ambulance to come pick me up, and I should have added that Julia woke me up a mere 2 hours before I finally managed to fall asleep after a long battle with a frustratingly plugged up nose. At least half of that explanation would be true. I hadn't fully prepared myself before commencing the complaining! I had complaint-blocked myself.

Thoroughly unsatisfied, I retreated my room, to write a blog post complaining about my failed attempt at complaining.


*I was THEN awoken again at 9 am by someone who wanted to discuss the sexual practices of elephants with me, but I couldn't whine about that because 9 is a perfectly reasonable time to text someone, and also I had started that conversation in the first place.