Raging Hormones.

Ah the joys of puberty.

I’m not saying I’m into 13 year olds or anything. I’m on about growing up. Those early teenage years plagued by mood swings, girls, new hairs, a voice that can’t decide what pitch it wants to stay at and trying to watch anything on Channel 5 after 11pm without getting caught.

So why am I talking about puberty? Well I’ll tell you…

This week, I have seen a dramatic shift in the behaviour of the majority of my year 2 groups. It has come out of nowhere. Nothing could prepare me for this. Not even the greatest of all teaching courses could prepare me for the nightmare that is…Sex Education.

Now, I don’t have to teach sex education, I just teach English. Due to spending many years hanging around with depraved individuals (or friends as some people might call them), some of the stories I could tell would put them off sex until age of 40. However, the subject of sex has sent them doolally and it’s all they ask me about.

“Are you a virgin?”, “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”, “Do you like to have sex?”

This poses a dilemma for me: How do I maintain my professionalism without ruining my credibility as a red blooded, sophisticated, cultured male, feared by boyfriends and husbands and envied by Michael Kynman?*

Obviously I’ve got to be professional but incase you were wondering I lost my virginity when I was 12.

Only kidding. I was 10.

I don’t know what they teach the kids in sex education in Spain or from what age they start doing it (sex education I mean, not ‘doing it’). My sex education was mixed. My parents were very open and honest with me if I had anything to ask and I turned out ok (unlike our Courtney). My mum can recall me telling her how the Pamela Anderson poster on my door, which my dad got me for my birthday, made me feel…down there. To this day I deny saying such a thing, seen as I was 9 years old at the time yet my mum will not let it go. When I was around 5 or 6, my uncle got me into comedy such as Harry Enfield and Reeves and Mortimer, so I was rarely embarrassed about rude words. He also lent me a book when I was 11 called: "How To Be a Complete Bastard". My Aunty is one of the most hilariously crude people known to man and for most people that know me well, would agree that this must be where I got it from. However, I was always told that I could never use such words in school. But I did because I was an absolute rebel.

 Year 6 at primary school was the first time we were taught sex education. It involved a very dated VHS with a family, stark bollock naked, playing frisbee on a beach, with close-ups of their genitals. I’m sure other people saw that harrowing video in school too. There was also a book about the human body with very vibrant, colourful drawings. One such drawing took up a full page and depicted a couple having sex with a cat next to the bed (the couple weren’t having sex with the cat, the cat was just next to them in the picture). The book described sex as: “…a bit like a grown up cuddle”.

 The only other time I did sex education in school was when I was 15. So between then, it was mainly learnt from pornography found in bushes on school fields, Eurotrash and the occasional trip to Andy Machen’s when no-one was in so we could watch some of his brothers collection, which involved the job of remembering exactly how you found the video and exactly what point you started watching it, which required expert re-winding skills. When we were in Year 9, a guy called Jed from the sexual health clinic came to speak to us about sex. Jed was cool. He had longish black hair and wore a black leather jacket with a black roll neck jumper, like a modern day Milk Tray man, who snook into your house and left condoms instead of chocolates. Jed talked to us about sex like we were grown ups. He said fanny and nob and tits. He said he was going to demonstrate how to put on a condom but he didn’t have his ‘big rubber cock’. He was my hero.

 But back to the kids, they’ve gone locoooo. Within a week they’ve become sex-crazed teenagers. Writing who they love on the board, having boyfriends and girlfriends, telling me who has been kissing who with tongues, some of them even scratching the initials of their other half into their arms with scissors. I have reported the latter because, without sounding like a health and safety nut, it’s just plain ridiculous and dangerous.

At the moment, with my year 2 groups, we have been studying what’s on TV. To start the lesson I have asked them to write a type of TV programme on the board i.e comedy, quiz show etc. and give me an example. Some clever shits decided to write "Bellas y Ambiciosas" (Beautiful and ambitious) which I later found out is a soft-core erotic TV novel and RedTube (which is a porn site not a program and is prounounced Reth Toobay over here). When I was their age, we didn’t have easy access to such high quality internet porn. They don’t know they’re born...

*Anyone that knows me will know I'm very sarcastic. But the bit about Kynman is completely true.