Yesterday we were having drinks after lunch and sitting talking about stuff and things.

We also had drinks during lunch, in case you got concerned that the wine was left unattended for too long.

My daughter and my friend’s daughter (Cara) are the best friends in the world.  They met at pre-primary and the strangeness in the both of them resonated with the strange they saw in the other.

The girls have attended different primary school but remain good friends.  They are very close and I think good for each other.  Because time and space they do not see each other as regularly as they would like, so any meeting is a moment of supreme happiness.

When they see each other they light up and their happiness is off the scales.

Back to the wine. Karen (Cara’s mom) and I were talking and Karen wanted to let me know that the girls where playing in the room.  They still play Barbies and My Little Pony and it is all so adorably innocent.

They are 12 years old and seem to be behind the maturity curve, but it is seriously okay in every possible way.

Anyway the two girls came through and asked Karen a pressing question about STD.  I took in a rather sharp breath. I took another sip of my wine and tried to steady myself in the chair I would never fall out of.  For a moment it felt like the earth’s surface was moving towards my face rather fast.

There is seldom a situation where STD’s makes for light conversation and if your 12 year old girls bring it up as a subject that you do not sit there and whisper “fuck” under your breath.

Karen has answered the question in a calm and adult manner.  The girls seemed happy with the answer and returned to their room to carry on playing.

I felt a bit incensed and while I was there we asked the girls to come through and we chatted to them about “how the fuck the two of you decided to question STD’s?  But in a calm, non-incensed voice.

You know that moment when STD conversation is your fault —– yes, that moment.

I struggle with insomnia — and up and above the medication I have found podcasts to be really great. I tend to listen to crime “based” podcasts.  I had been listening to a podcast that was set around the Yorkshire Ripper and the East Area Rapist.

Anyway I had been listening to these stories when going to sleep.

The girls always sleep with me.  I assumed they had fallen asleep.  Isabelle fell asleep 3 minutes in, as I felt the weight of her against me, but I did not check on Georgia.  So she was awake for how ever long she was.

So you wonder how the STD conversation came up.

It only gets worse.

Georgia and Cara and playing Barbies and Georgia has a story where the one Barbie is 18 years old and has a baby of 2 years old.

It appears neither of the girls could imagine a universe where an 18 year old girl had a 2 year old baby.  {I want to live in their universe forever}

Georgia remembered the rape stories and suggested the girl was raped and that is how she fell pregnant.

Yes, I agree I cannot imagine the levels of wrong this is.

So somehow in this, the girls chatted about teenage pregnancies and the next leap was STD’s.

These girls are 12 years old — I realise in some cultures they would be married off and possibly raped by their 65 year old husbands. Or what ever other horror you can work into this equation.

I get that I am freaking about my 12 year old asking about STD’s when I posted a story recently about a 13 year old who skipped out of her home for 5 days and ended up with a 19 year old boy, with her parents having zero idea where she was. Or contact details.

I realise that the collision of these two stories is rather abrupt.

Parenting is not easy.

The horror of your children growing up before your eyes is a horror in many ways.  It is a train you cannot stop or even slow …..

Having a discussion about STD’s is not something I really want to talk about.   But, again, I would rather settle myself that they ask me, and not some stinky boy.  But adding how the 18 year old girl got a baby is far far far more disturbing that I would ever hope to hear.

How is your parenting going?

Mine, clearly not as well as I thought.

Credit images: http://www.fowllanguagecomics.com/