For all of our lives, my sister and I were home-schooled by our mom.
We live in a rural area, just me, my mom, and my twin sister Julia. My name's Robert. Not Robert California, not Robert New York, just Robert.
Mom and Dad got divorced so long ago that I can't even remember when it happened, and Dad had gradually faded from our lives. Our parents had split their seemingly vast fortune, which left our mom with more than enough resources to spend the majority of her time being our teacher. She was really into it; she developed lesson plans, decorated the classroom for holidays, gave reading assignments, the whole shebang. She had even found a couple of those combination chair-desks, complete with the little metal basket under the chair.
It's not that there wasn't a public school system that we could have attended, but Mom had gone there when she had grown up, and she didn't want to send us there.
"I don't want you guys to go through what I went through at the schools around here. It's better that I just teach you here at home," was the general explanation. We never pressed Mom for more details, and since the public schools around here looked so run-down and depressing anyway, we felt like we understood.
I was lucky. Rather than go to the crappy schools in this little town, I got to spend my time in the very nice house I grew up in, with my two favorite people in the world: Mom and Julia.
Shortly after my sister and I turned eighteen in the middle of our final year of high school, Mom wanted to introduce a new topic of education.
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"Shouldn't we have started learning about this stuff... a while ago?" I asked our teacher from my seated position in my desk. I glanced over at my sister and we exchanged a quick look: I know, right?
"Well," Mom began, "I waited until you two were grown for a few different reasons. One of them is because I wanted you guys to be able to take this stuff seriously. It's important, and I didn't want a couple of pubescent kids snickering about penises and vaginas or anything like that. You're adults now, so I expect that you can behave like adults during these lessons." She sounded serious, but there was an odd hint of playfulness dancing under her voice.
"Only technically adults," I replied.
"Yeah," Julia agreed, "I mean, I don't really feel like an adult."
"You never really do, sweetie," Mom told her.
"Well, maybe after today's lesson --- we will," I said, stretching my arms in front of myself and yawning through my sentence. It was only a few minutes after 9AM. Our mom, who used to joke that we should call her Ms. Mommy during school hours, actually ran a pretty tight home-schooling ship. She wasn't unfair, but she wasn't as easy as someone might hope their mom would be as a teacher.
"Oh, honey," Mom started, "It's not gonna be just a 'today' thing. There's a lot to cover. Where do you two wanna get started?"
My sister and I looked at each other unknowingly. Why was she asking us?
"Mom, uh," I started to say, still looking at my sister and slowly turning towards our mom, "Aren't you the teacher here? We don't really know anything."
"Like, at all," Julia added. I nodded in agreement.
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My sister and I were raised without the Internet. We used it in school for learning and research, but Mom didn't let us spend time on the Internet outside of school the way we understand most kids do. Neither of us had a phone either.
As impossible and bizarre as this may sound, my sister and I knew virtually nothing about sex; all I really knew for sure was that it had something to do with the penis, and a vague understanding that the woman's vagina would also be involved. That last part was only a guess, though.
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"Then in that case," Mom began, switching to full teacher mode, "Let's start from the beginning. Can anyone tell me the first thing that usually happens during sex?" Mom looked back and forth between my sister and myself.
"Uh... Arousal?" Julia asked slowly.
"That's right! When two people have sex, the first thing that starts that process is the feeling of arousal. It might be felt in one person before the other, but both people involved will feel aroused. Now, can any tell me what that might look like?"
My sister and I glanced at each other unsurely, then looked up at Mom for direction.
"Okay, okay. Let me ask this instead. And remember, we're all adults now, right?"
We nodded back to her, still seated in our all-in-one chair-desks.
Mom took a deep breath, then she clasped her hands together and asked, "Robert, does your penis ever get hard?" Oh, god. This was embarrassing It had gotten hard before. I wasn't sure why, but it definitely had.
"Yeah, sometimes in the morning when I wake up," I replied bashfully.
"Wait, it gets hard?!" My sister blurted out, as if she had just heard the most ridiculous thing in the world.
"Julia, please," Mom brushed Julia's question off and returned her focus to me.
"And does it get bigger when it's hard?" Mom asked plainly. I told her it did.
"Like how much bigger?" Julia interrupted again, raising one eyebrow.
"That's a little different for everyone," Mom explained. "Robert, how much bigger does yours get, since your sister wants to know?"
I sighed. This was still pretty awkward, but I reminded myself again that we were all adults. I explained to my sister: "Kind of a lot bigger. And it sticks up too. And it's harder to pee."
"It sticks up?" Julia asked, and Mom answered:
"That's right. That's why it's called an 'erection,' honey. It actually sticks up, like a tower. Did you know that when people build a tower, you could say they 'erected' it?"
"Huh. An erection," Julia said thoughtfully. "Why does it get bigger though?" she asked. We both looked up at Mom for answers.
"That's for another lesson, sweetheart. Right now we're focusing on the basics. Now, Robert, when your penis gets hard, does anything else happen?" Mom asked sort of clinically.
"Uh, it gets more sensitive, I guess," I said awkwardly.
"Have you ever tried touching it when it gets like that?" Mom asked.
Okay, adult time. Time to be a big adult at school and tell the truth. How could my sister and I ever learn if we weren't honest with our teacher and each other?
"Sometimes I do. It feels good to kinda, like... rub it and massage it," I answered, completely truthfully, feeling somewhat ridiculous.