I see freaky people

Ever trip off of your introduction to sex? Did your parents give it to you straight? Or did they send you deviant signals by making up ish like this?

• I was about six when I overheard my mother and the lady next door discussing a rape that had occured in a nearby alley. All in their business and trying to keep up, I asked what "rape" meant. This was my mother's way of explaining the concept: "It means a man took a rake and raked leaves off a woman's body." And she demonstrated it -- raking -- so I could really get the picture.
• Another time, when the neighbor's son and I rummaged through shopping bags tucked in the back seat of my mother's car, we found some big old, spongy cone-shaped underwearish things. Sort of like this: When she returned to the car, I sat in the back seat waving both of her white, cone-thingys in the air. "Mama. What are these for?" I asked coyly. She broke it down Like a Virgin. "I use 'em to bake cakes," she said, not really making eye contact. My boy and I knew what was up with the bra cups. But why? She hadn't exactly missed the bosom boat. I let her off the hook though.
• My friend D's story was whack, too. Her mother warned her about letting a boy stick his "raw meat" inside her. So D. feared any boy who might try to get at her like this: I wonder where D thought the boys hid the ham, say during Geography.
• Another childhood friend, R., jogged my memory a few months ago about the hysteria that gripped the girls at our grade school: people we called charm molesters. Heard of them?

...And you wonder why everyone seems uniquely throwed. At least medium-rare.