Dad’s Condom Lesson

When I was just about to become a teenager, I remember my dad being very concerned about me being properly educated about sex and sexuality. My mother has been a bit of a prude since I’ve known her, but she made an effort at this time as well: bringing home sex education videos from her school for me to watch (I attended a catholic school in a different district).

Being the curious person that I am, I was interested in the videos and would often watch them alone when I got home from school.

One day my dad happened to come home from work while I was watching one of the videos on contraception. Over the past months he and I had had a number of edifying talks about waiting to find someone you loved before having sex, protecting oneself from infections and pregnancy, and other topics in this vein.

He was pleased that I was watching one of the educational videos and was eager to assist with the lesson. While I continued to watch the video, slowly becoming mortified by my dad’s enthusiasm, my dad went upstairs and came back with a condom from wherever my parent’s stash was.

I’d never seen a condom before (besides the dirty used ones that we occasionally found on the baseball diamond and school and didn’t dare touch) so I was interested to be allowed to open a fresh one for myself. My dad encouraged me to try unrolling it a little way and stretching it to see how durable it was. I did and was suitably impressed with how much the material could stretch.

I soon lost interest in the condom though and turned back to my video, thinking the “hands-on” portion of this lesson was mercifully over.

Apparently my dad wasn’t sure I had learned everything he wanted me to know about condoms – specifically, how un-durable they can be. Much to my SUPREME embarrassment, my dad proceeded to unroll the condom over his fingers and began rubbing the condom with his other hand – trying to create enough friction for the condom to break.

I stared intently at the television, trying my best to ignore my dad’s shenanigans, but he was determined. It ended up taking quite a while for the condom to break in the end; I think even my dad began feeling a little embarrassed by this lesson gone awry.

But when the condom finally did break, my dad was triumphant – “There! You see? Condoms can break when you’re having sex, so you’ll want to make sure that you use other forms of protection as well.”

“Yes dad” I replied dutifully, relieved that the lesson was finally over.

Now that I think about it, that might be the last time my dad tried to educate me about contraception.

Looking back I still cringe a little at my poor dad’s antics. But I realize that he was only trying very hard to teach his daughter about the dangers of the world – desperate to provide me with tools to keep myself safe when he couldn’t be around to protect me.