The Infamous “Talk”

I was 20 years old before I got “the talk”.

When I was going through puberty, my parents were still finishing up going through newborns–and somehow “the talk” escaped them.

They decided to do better for my brothers, so they purchased Barbara and Dennis Rainey’s Passport 2 Purity weekend retreat kit and Dad started preparing for a guys weekend retreat.

They rented a cabin at one of our state parks and purchased massive amounts of meat and “bellywash” (soda). And they headed off for a weekend of manly pursuits (fire building, mountain biking, and copious amounts of meat.)

And, of course, they had “the talk”.

Joshua and Daniel got theirs. John and Timothy got theirs.

Then Mom started talking of preparing for Grace’s weekend retreat and Anna and I got jealous.

It wasn’t fair, we said. We’d never gotten “the talk”. We’d never enjoyed a weekend retreat with our mother, doing girlie things. We’d never listened to the Rainey audio-cassette tapes that my brothers rolled their eyes and shook their heads at.

So at last, when I was 20 years old, my parents decided to backtrack. They’d do the right thing by their eldest daughters. They’d give us “the talk.” Better late than never, right?

We got a hotel room at a hotel with a pool. We ate Macaroni Grill for dinner. We explored craft boutiques during the day and had lunch at The Green Gateau, a fancy little Lincoln restaurant. And when we weren’t doing other things, we listened to the Raineys talk about purity.

Not surprisingly, “the talk” was geared towards a younger audience. The content was good, but nothing we hadn’t managed to discuss already in much less formal conversations. The official “birds and the bees” segment passed so quickly that we had to stop and comment to each other. “Was that it? Was that all they were going to say about the mechanics?” Apparently so.

Yes, “the talk” was a bit belated–and therefore rather comical.

But we came away from our weekend talk having joined the fraternity of Passport 2 Purity graduates, proudly bearing our badge of membership: a musical rendition of Colossians 1:18.

Now all the Menter children can proudly sing:

“He is also head of the body, the church. And He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself may come to have first place in everything…” YE-AH-AH

And sing it we do, whether needling one another with a “private” reminder of the weekends we shared or enjoying a moment of family togetherness around the Fourth of July dinner table.

Ah, fond memories of “the talk”.