The popular play “The Vagina Monologues” ran into some trouble recently (I
think this was in Florida somewhere, but I can’t find the link), when
a woman driving her niece by the theater was “offended” when the young girl
(don’t know how old she was) read the marquee and asked what a vagina was. She
complained to the theatre, and they changed the marquee to read The “Hoohaa”
Monologues (including the quotation marks). How stupid is this? It’s not
like “vagina”
is some vulgar or dirty or even slang word. I know that if my son read a marquee
that said The Vagina Monologues, he would probably just ignore it. If, however, he
read The “Hoohaa” Monologues, he’d laugh at it and make a big fuss, and ask what
a “Hoohaa” is. He already knows what a vagina is (well, I’m not sure he knows
what one is, but he knows that girls have one and boys don’t, and he
doesn’t consider the word dirty or taboo or anything), but I know that
he’d never let go of the word “hoohaa”, and we’d be hearing it all the time.
In any case, any child old enough to read the word vagina is old enough
to be told what it is and that it’s not a dirty word.

This reminds me of one of my favourite “my kid is so cute” stories, from when
Ryan was just two years old. Gail and I were going out, and we got a babysitter
for Ryan (Nicky wasn’t even born yet, so Ryan was definitely two). He was
sitting at the table finishing his dinner, and Lindsay the babysitter came in
and sat down next to him. She said hi, and he put down his fork, looked at her
silently for a couple of seconds, and then said matter-of-factly, “You don’t
have a penis.” Lindsay, to her credit, didn’t even flinch, but confirmed his
suspicion. He nodded and went back to his dinner, apparently satisfied with her
response.