With the little persons at home during the pandemic, I am filled with wonder at the efforts of our schools to continue to indoctrinate the little urchins in the joys of Readin’, Writin’ ‘n Rithmetic, even if only from a hapless virtual distance.

I can’t imagine how today’s teachers are managing it, and I think we should all get together and holler “Go for it! You can DO it! We promise to vote for the next school levy if only you won’t give up! Two-four-six-eight, guess who we appreciate!” And like that.

I wholeheartedly support the schools’ efforts to succeed, no matter the pitfalls or lack of enough battered iPads – to prepare the children for life in their future world, especially in the category of Sex Education. I believe that Sex Education is very important. Especially since I never had any.

As everybody knows, in the 1930s and ‘40s when I was growing up, Sex Education was not included in the academic curriculum, partly because, like Robotics or Cyberporn, or Zoom, it hadn’t been invented yet. There was absolutely no need for it anyway, because as all of mankind knew, especially good Catholics, the teaching of the art of conception would have been entirely the responsibility of each child’s assigned Guardian Angel.

It was a fiction, of course. My own Guardian Angel has never uttered a single word about sex. I think he was entirely too bashful. He still is. I know I can count on him for keeping me from falling out of trees or over a cliff, but administering Sex Education doesn’t seem to be on his job description.

Or you may have thought that Sex Education wasn’t needed in the schools, because, of course, our parents were responsible for it. The trouble was that they didn’t know anything about it, either. And neither did their parents. It was a hopeless ancestral situation. Frankly, I have no idea how any of us were ever born. Or maybe they knew how to “do it”, they just didn’t know how to share the wealth by explaining it to the kiddies. Or else, maybe they figured that since nobody explained it to them, it must be a transition which would be forwarded to the next generation via some kind of osmosis.

Because of that parental failure, or because our Guardian Angels couldn’t or wouldn’t step up to the plate, it seems to be commonly assumed that Sex Education was something that was acquired in the back seat of cars or out behind the outhouse. I would like to be able to speak from experience on that, but it’s really none of your business. Well, anyway, the meager information I and most of my girl friends managed to acquire about sex, was usually communicated kid-to-kid on the playground. And much of it was incorrect.

Because of all this misinformation, you may be entertaining the delusion that the schools were stepping in with biology classes which would surely at least explain about the busy humanitarian efforts of sex-crazed birds and bees.

If you attended parochial schools, however, you would be keenly aware that that wasn’t exactly how the game was played. The environment was just a tiny bit more cloistered than that.

I attended St. Patrick’s School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from kindergarten through 10th grade. In all that time, except for Father Peters patrolling the basketball stands with his big flashlight to be sure there was no hanky-panky going on, the subject of sex never arose. Not exactly. But some weird kind of tension started showing up in the classroom when I was in 6th grade.

In the olden days, the children were different than they are today. Well, the boys weren’t. They were just as they are today: grubby, shirttails hanging out, snickering, hooting and hollering, smelly, bubble-gum chewing and as rascally as they are today, – completely below average in every way! Attention Deficit Disorder hadn’t been invented yet, but they all had it.

But you wouldn’t recognize the girls! The little girls of my long begone era were mostly prim, proper, always presentable, striving for good grades, devoted to Sister, and perfect in every way. Me, especially. As for me and most of my friends, you could probably say that we were completely insufferable.

At St. Patrick’s, there seemed to be an unmitigated rule, that the girls were to be seated in rows next to the windows. The boys’ rows would be placed on the other side of the room – the one with the door – as close to the principal’s office as possible.

This made sense. All the nuns had good reason to know that the boys couldn’t be seated next to the windows. This was in anticipation of all the items which would be hurled out, like paper airplanes, spitballs, gum, homework assignments, and the occasional little numbskull who thought he was Superman.

In the Mason Dixon line that separated the girls’ rows from the boys’ rows, there existed a kind of no man’s land, at least as far as the girls were concerned. The boys seemed oblivious of this invisible line of sexual tension. I don’t think they even noticed that on the other side of the classroom there was a horde of perfectly prim and proper paragons of virtue who regarded the creatures on the other side of the classroom with malevolent contempt. And whenever our beloved Sister couldn’t take their persecution any longer, we silently cheered her on when she’d blow up and hurl blackboard erasers at the offending miscreants.

At least, this was the scene as it was at the beginning of our 6th grade school year.

Pretty soon, odd things started happening. Like pimples (zits hadn’t been invented yet). Some of the kids started getting a little taller. (Not my friend Louise and me, though. The big event didn’t happen to either of us until 9th grade, and by then it was too late to catch up. We continued to be the class runts). And one day, a shocking rumor was whispered that one of the girls was wearing a brassiere (bras hadn’t been invented yet, either). But strangest of all that year, was that the invisible wall we had always protected and enjoyed was starting to crumble.

At first, Louise and I were just a little bewildered. Besides getting taller than us, some of our formerly militant compatriots were starting to smile – S-M-I-L-E – at the antics of the pitiful lifeforms on the other side of the classroom. Sometimes, instead of a proper sneer, the girls would actually giggle and simper at the scoundrels. Yes, it was pretty revolting, and it got worse as the year wore on.

It would have been nice if someone could have explained that what we were witnessing was the perfectly normal earthquake called puberty.

My last two years of high school were spent at Mount Mercy Academy – a school for girls. By that time, I had gradually come to accept, that while my understanding of sex might be a bit spotty, the good Sisters knew even less. Or they weren’t telling.

The closest we ever came to Sex Education was in Biology during the semester we learned about dissecting innocent dead animals. By that time, of course, I and my fellow students all thought we were pretty sophisticated in our understanding that the male anatomy included a little wee-wee, and ours didn’t. There was intense surprise among us when we discovered that none of the frogs had one. So there went that theory!

Well, maybe there was one subject which might be related to Sex Education. It was taught fervently by the Sisters at both of the schools I attended. The information that was revealed to us was that a certain well-known baby had been born via Immaculate Conception, an interesting but confusing concept which was never technically explained to us. All we knew was that the infant’s mom was a virgin before, during, and after his birth. The only problem with this gem of knowledge was that – just as with all the valuable sex information we had acquired through our informal methods – it was INCORRECT.

I don’t blame the good Sisters though. No way! What were they supposed to believe? In the Apostle’s Creed, for instance, it says right there that Jesus, “…was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and was born to the Virgin Mary.”

I found out the truth when I was about 65 years old, and I’m still shocked. In actual fact, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception doesn’t involve the birth of the Baby Jesus. It didn’t even pertain to Him exactly. It was what happened in His grandmother’s womb when she was pregnant with his mother, Mary. The doctrine teaches that Mary was conceived the usual earthy way but without the stain of original sin on her soul. That’s what the Immaculate Conception is. Now raise your hand if you didn’t know that. That way, I’ll know for sure that you did, yes, attend parochial school in the 1930s and 40s. Because that was the way it was taught! I swear.

The confusion still remains, though. If the dogma wasn’t referring to Mary’s perpetual virginity – like we were taught – is it just an optional choice to believe or not believe it? All right, boys and girls, I think we need to get to the bottom of this conundrum.

Thusly, relying on those prim and proper and perfect academic skills I was able to hone as a grade-schooler at the knees of the good Sisters, I have devised a simple multiple choice test for you. Even if you’re not a Catholic, the taking of this test is obligatory and will count toward your final grade. You may enter your answers in the Comments section below. No cheating is allowed.

Full disclosure: I took the test myself but it’s hard to know what kind of a grade I’ll get. I marked choice A. But I briefly also considered D. Blessed Mother has always been my favorite Lady and always seems to be at my side – especially at those times when my guardian angel has been asleep at the switch. As far as I’m concerned, however Mary managed her contribution to that spectacular gift to the world, is A-okay with me.

(And to tell the truth, it would actually be a comfort to know that maybe that good, kind, stoic St. Joseph wasn’t there just to be eye candy.)

And so, what do YOU think???