What are condoms? Being born on and raised on a rural Oklahoma farm with little chance to attend school, my sex education consisted of watching a bull do cows and watching a stallion do mares. Boy howdy, I sure received a lot of butt switchings from grandpa for my standing around watching those magnificent shows. Not a butt switching for watching rather a butt switching for not tending to my daily farming chores. Of course there were plently of other animals providing sex education for us kids. Chickens, hogs, rabbits, squirrels, and certainly wild dogs amongst the wild mix. Dogs, totally disgusting. Dogs just stand there with their butts glued together while panting and drooling. Yuck. Bulls and stallions, now this is a vivid big screen sex education! I did eventually learn an old Indian trick of lying low in tall grass to watch bulls and stallions without being gored or kicked, and mostly to avoid a grandpa butt switching. When my future husband returned from Vietnam, returned to health from his wounds, returned to our farm to resume his life, this is when I began my earnest sex education. I also learned new old Indian tricks, like hiding around the corner of our farm house, crawling under our wood plank porch or standing very still amongst corn stalks, all to listen to the boys swap lies about their manly adventures. In time, I heard remarks about a “rubber” but this took me a month of Sundays to figure out where a rubber fits. I did ponder how you would go about putting one of those on a bull or on a stallion. Those boys would talk about wearing a rubber so there would not be any extra farm hands. My boy would often quip, “Yeah, I sow wild oats on Saturday night and pray for crop failure on Sunday.” Grandpa had us plant potatoes under a full moon, always. This makes sense. Planting oats on a Saturday night, no, this is plumb silly. Never heard the word “condom” least not until well into my adulthood and my motherhood. I did quickly learn of “tying the knots” after giving birth to our girl. I told my husband, “I ain’t ever doing that again. That was not fun.” I cussed him for several months after, I mean, he was completely at fault for knocking me up. We have never use condoms. I suppose this is a benefit of being monogamous, well, at least with my husband, sorta. We do have those two French lesbian girlfriends of an intimate twenty years. At least he has not knock up one of them like he did me. I think he learned a lesson from all my cussing after our girl was born, or our lesbian, most of the time lesbian girlfriends, practice birth control. However, an important however, we, both my husband and I, made sure our girl received the best of a sex education. We started with her when young, made sure she understands both the benefits of healthy sex and the dangers of unhealthy sex. We made sure she knows about condoms, birth control, risk of disease and death, along with good sexual mores and responsible fidelity. Of course, when she entered her early teens, I locked her up in my kitchen pantry until she was well into her twenties. Plenty of food and water in there, along with a thunder bucket. Not shared here at WoW, each summer break from school, I hauled our girl back to Oklahoma or hauled her to an Indian reservation in northern New Mexico or up to the Lakotas, to live, to learn of, to experience her parents’ early lifestyle. We wanted her to understand our beginnings, to understand both our failures in life and our successes in life. We are her role models, as dubious as this is. Quite fun, you know, just the two of us, mother and young daughter, standing around out in a pasture to watch a bull do cows or a stallion do mares. This is one heck of a show and a good way to open up conservation with a child about sex education. We never received a butt switching for this; grandpa was not around to remind us of our chores to be done. I wish he was. Okpulot Taha Choctaw Nation

I was 16 to his 18 and didn’t want to but he convinced me that if I loved him I would. So yeah he used a condom. Right after we finished and got dressed he had the nerve to ask if I was really a virgin cause he didn’t think so. No we didn’t marry, as soon as he went to college and returned I broke up with him.

No - think I remember seeing them in stores but did not really understand what they were. The pill had just come out but we had no access to it, it was for older women and probably married ones. He and I are still friends whenever we happen to see each other, but it was like “huh - thats all it is about” but we continued to go out and bought a book to find out what we should do. Thank heavens I did not end up pregnant. I remember the wire hanger and backroom/alley abortions. And the deaths it caused. There were still the “homes for unwed mothers” and the “homes for wayward girls” and the adoptions that were demanded by parents or others. Bad years - lets not repeat them. But this question sure brought about a smile and laughter.

No. I was so surprised to be finally “doing it” that only two things were on my mind: I hope we don’t get caught & I hope this isn’t poison ivy.

Ha! I still smile when I think of the “event” … I had it planned for days. He was Mr. Popular, I was four years younger and his most secret admirer. I had access to pharmaceutical rep’s samples and helped myself to a form of contraceptive I’ll be most of you didn’t even know existed … “foam” spermicidal. Everything went as planned and I had my way with him (until he went away to college the following year.) I liked that I chose my path and actions. Too bad for the double standards between gals and guys. Nobody to brag to or share in my happiness. That part sucked and times haven’t changed. But I’m still independent and like to think I call my own shots, still responsibly for the most part.