My girlfriend has a five year old son who decided to tell us how babies get into their mommy’s bellies. “The daddy puts it there with his balls!!!” he said with great enthusiasm while pointing to his own personal parts.

This is a little better than how I learned it’s done.

You see, when I was his age in 1985 there was a HUGE AIDS scare thing going on. There were commercials on TV even during the afternoon reruns of Diff’rent Strokes when kids were watching. Because it was THAT important. I guess. Since gradeschoolers in NYC were constantly boinking.

It just seemed that every other commercial was an AIDS or anti-drug PSA. I could be wrong, because I tend to exagerate in my mind and then eventually that egageration becomes the reality of my world. It isn’t totally the worst way to live, by the way. Since I have a firm memory of Lion-O High-fiveing me at a friend’s birthday party. And it was the REAL Lion-O. Not his uncle in a Lion-O costume.

Anyway… the AIDS commercials were fairly vague because god forbid you actually give real information to kids that they can use to learn the realities. So I was curious and I asked the one person who I knew knew EVERYthing.

My friend Charlie’s older brother. Who was in the fifth grade.

He was TWICE as old as me, and knew all the cheats and tricks in every Nintendo game. And he had a skateboard. And could do a little jump and that thing where you stomp on the back of it and it flips up and you can catch it and you look cool!!! He was the bestest!

So I asked him what AIDS was and he told me that it’s when you pee when you have sex. That’s how you catch AIDS. Also? If you let a dude look at you while you’re in the bathroom you can catch it too. Which is why Patrick McHeely used to try and jump up and peer over the stalls while I was pooping at school.

That, and I think he was disturbed.