Many years ago when I was just a kid (about 7) I knew nothing of how babies were made and I never really gave it much thought until the day that my dad decided to explain the birds and bees to my brother and myself.
I need to go back a few days before the day my dad got so bold. We had gone to a baseball game a few days before and back then there were plenty of old black men who yelled "PEANUTS" throughout the stadiums along with whatever they hocked at the time like cold beer and so forth. Anyway, Dad bought us both a bag of peanuts and I hadn't eaten all mine so I had them with me a few days later.
Now, as it happened that same day dad also bought us a model of a Sherman tank to put together, not that I knew a damned thing about building a Sherman tank, but we were sitting at the kitchen table with all those little plastic pieces all over the place when dad sat down with such a serious look on his face.
I think he said something to the effect that we needed to learn about life, but what I do remember him discussing was where babies came from.
Being the goofy kid I was I paid about as much attention to him as I would if he had been reciting Shakespeare to me, but I do remember one thing he said, but somehow I think I misunderstood exactly what he said or meant. I remember the words: "...and the man puts his peanuts in the woman and that's where babies come from."
Naturally I really didn't give it a lot of thought right then, but later on I started thinking and somehow it just didn't make sense. "...the man puts his peanuts in..."...WHAT? What the heck was my dad talking about? And for several years, about three or so, give or take a year I truly believed that babies came from peanuts. I dissected peanuts in search of how babies could possibly spawn from a peanut, I searched in vain for what seemed like forever until one day it all fell into place when I heard that word. That one magic word put everything into perspective for me and like a flash, like a vision burnt across the sky I realized in one fell swoop that my dad actually uttered the word: penis. :-X He could have used any other slang term and I would have completely understood the meaning of life as I knew it at 7, but he used penis confusing me with peanuts. There is still to this day another whole issue floating around in my subconscious about what exactly happens once the real story takes place, but that's another story. I do happen to have two grown offspring, twenty-three and twenty-five years old.
The only reason I'm writing this is so that any prospective parents out there please, for the love of God, don't tell your kids that the man puts his peanuts in the woman.
