where babies come from

My friend Cindy has a daughter that's reached the age where the 'where do babies come from' questions start getting asked. In anticipation of this query, Cindy has been storing a baby-making book deep in the recesses of a closet, waiting for her young one to ask so that it can once again see the light of day and join its follow members of the book population on a shelf somewhere in the house.

So once the question was asked, the book was retrieved, the dust was blown off the cover, and Cindy's daughter was instructed to read the book and that a question and answer session would follow.

Cindy told me that the book, like many others of its kind, described sex in clinical terms and as an act between 'a married man and woman who were in love.' Unlike other books, though, this one contained Ziggy-esque cartoons of the sex participants engaged in the baby making process. Yes, there's nothing like seeing sex for the first time, re-enacted by short, bald, squat little drawings. Ziggy's little penis all primed and pumped up, just ready for insertion. And perhaps, as every family has a black-sheep, Ziggy's brother, lacking the talent to make it into the funny pages, is off doing porn in some children's book.

So they sat at the kitchen table, her daughter reading, Cindy waiting.

Upon finishing, her daughter glanced over at her with a somewhat befuddled look upon her face.

"I already know about all this stuff mom," her daughter told her, "but what is this 'making love' that the book kept on talking about?"

"That's just another word for having sex," Cindy told her.

"Oh, I thought that was called humping."

"Uh, well, that's another word too," Cindy said.

"Alright," her daughter said, "I'm hungry, can I have a Fruit Roll-Up?"

And I think it’s safe to say that the innocence of childhood is pretty much over when you can’t read a Ziggy or Charlie Brown comic without imagining who they’ve been humping just a panel before.

Though I'm still wondering what the deal was with the Fruit Roll-Up request.