A lunchtime conversation I had reminded me of something I noted a couple of years ago: Aren't you glad that your parents didn't explain sex to you by really telling you about the birds and the bees? "Now, daughter, think of yourself as a bee. There's a 99.99% chance that you'll never get any, and instead of developing an extensive reproductive system, you'll get to have a stinger and a venom pouch. But there's a tiny chance that you'll be a queen bee, which means you'll be really huge, and all these male bees will have sex with you."
"Son, you have to find the queen, the one all the other boys want to mate with. Then you'll have sex with her, and your penis will fall off and stay in her body. Then you'll die. Oh, before you have sex with her, make sure you take the other guy's penis out of her first."
"No wait, daughter, actually, think of yourself as a bird. That means you've got a single cloaca, through which your urine, feces, and eggs go out, and the male's semen comes in. Just remember that, and you'll be OK."
Good thing I learned about sex through the "S" volume of the encyclopedia instead.
Cute.
Yes, seriously.
In the 50's THAT was the real American way!
Actually, it's even worse -- even if you become a queen, the odds are that an earlier hatched queen will kill you in your cell. If you manage to get out of the hive to mate, you may not be able to find your way back after mating. If you do get back you will be laying eggs at the command of the workers who actually run the colony -- a queen is just an egg-laying machine for the colony.
If you're a drone, and you don't mate, you just get shoved out of the hive to die when it gets cold. Freeze to death, starve, or have your endophallus ripped off -- quite a choice, eh, guys?
Even worse, for both queen and drone, they may never actually mate -- there's a big market for fertilized queens that have been artificially inseminated, so the apiarist traps the drones, removes their semen vesicles, and inseminates the queen with what amounts to a tiny, tiny turkey baster -- it's no fun for anyone, including the beekeeper.
Life's not so hot for the workers, either.
The number one rule of beekeeping is DON'T ANTHROPOMORPHIZE BEES. They are lively, complicated little critters, but they are just livestock.
I'll stop now, but I'm available to take your questions. I'll be here all weekend. ;-)
Though the last bit could leave you emotionally scarred and homophobic if you tuned in during the wrong hour.
But then I'm a product of 1980s-90s public schooling.
Tell me about it.
Mo
Thing is, he used as a resource a book written by a family psychologist and best-selling author. The book was titled "Preparing for Adolescence", the author was Dr. James Dobson.
Say what you will about his social/political views, he gave a reasonable fact-based introduction to puberty and the general details of sexual intercourse. He also gave a short discussion of the possible emotional tangles involved in sexual activity in an uncommitted relationship, and a medical description of the more common STD's.
I guess using a book like that as a reference gave my dad a different role, too. We could pretend that we were learning stuff together, rather than me listening to him.