Carol’s Column

It’s spring and sex is in the air

IT’S springtime, say my family.

Yes, me too.

“Yes, Ma, don’t you know, spring is when sex takes place,” said Nicky.

This piece of information was imparted to me at the breakfast table as we sat, a typical, happy, South African family, eating burnt grilled wors and eggs, bleary eyed and grunting to each other.

Personally, I have observed that it takes my family three hours or so to wake up in the morning. Before that, they are monosyllabic and uncommunicative.

To get back to sex.

“I was watching a programme about amoebas,” said Nicky.

“What is an amoeba?” asked Jamie, while chewing his toast carefully so as not to dislodge his Rainbow Jaws II dental wiring that is keeping two orthodontists in a jet-setting way to which he had become accustomed.

“It’s the lowest form of life,” replied Nicky, chewing equally carefully to protect her Jaws I wiring.

To get back to amoebas.

“No, a paramecium is an even lower form of life,” said Ralph. When you’re in matric, you know everything.

“So,” he continued, “they’re like amoebas, they procreate by themselves.”

“Oh, lucky amoebas,” said Nicky wistfully. “I wish I could just split up and have a baby when I felt like it instead of having to use a man or something.”

I know how she felt. But the ‘or something’ worried me.

I needn’t have worried.

“Nicky,” said Jamie, “sex is not a multiple choice thing like in a school test. You can’t use a man or something. It’s got to be a man.”

It was time to intervene.

“Isn’t this conversation a little premature,” I observed, “like 20 years too early. I mean, what’s this kind of procreating around here!”

“Henry’s like that,” replied Jamie. “He’s been visiting the great dane next door, she’s on heat.”

“That’s impossible!”

“What, that she’s on heat?”

“No, that little Henry, who when he’s not disguised as a warthog, is really a scottie, could find anything in common with a great dane.”

“Nothing is ever impossible, Ma, you’re always telling us that,” said Ralph. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way and Henry is persistent.”

“And I suppose you carry a stepladder behind him,” I couldn’t resist muttering.

I should have realised things were serious when Mrs Carbuncle, the great dane’s owner, phoned me shrilly.

“Come and fetch your horrible dog,” she screeched down the phone. “He’s just attacked Popsickle and she’s a highly-pedigreed creature. If you don’t keep him away from her, I’ll shoot him. We won’t have her mating with a genetic misfit.”

I’d bargained without the fact that it was spring and that Henry, a normal, hot-blooded male, had fallen in love.

Five times a day the phone rang with Popsickle’s angry owner spitting, spluttering and growling down the other end.

Until one day Henry came home smiling.

“He did it, Ma,” said Jamie matter of factly. “We must demand the pick of the litter.”

“Huh, do you think I want a mixture between a great dane and a scottie. The one’s a giant, the other’s a midget.”

Lovely

Yes, it’s definitely spring, and isn’t it lovely.

The trees are blossoming. Willie the weaver has built his seventh nest to try and lure his wife inside. And stripped our oak tree in the process.

Even the earthworms are happily writhing together because there’s been a worm population explosion underneath the fuchsias.

Sex is in the air.

Meanwhile, on the home front, I have to answer some very serious questions.

“Ma, how does an amoeba procreate by itself,” said Nicky staring at herself in the mirror. “Which part goes where?”

“They, er, split up and each new part becomes a whole part.”

“You mean each amoeba has two breasts and two bottoms and two ...”

“Ja, something like that,” I murmured.

“How can I do that?” she wanted to know.

“Nicky, people aren’t quite the same ... we need a little help from friends to make babies.”

“You mean like Henry and the great dane.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right.”

“Well, I don’t want to choose anyone who looks like Henry. I’d hate to have a baby who looked like a warthog.”

“Me too,” I muttered, “I’d hate you to have a baby that looked like a warthog.”

“So tell me what REALLY happens, Ma. You can skip out the birds and the bees. We did them at nursery school.”

“Okay, I’ll explain everything as it is.”

“That’s what worries me,” said my tiny daughter of the sea-urchin eyes and the plum cheeks. “When I was six, you told me that hadedas laid eggs and I believed you for four years. Today I want the truth.”

“Okay, Nicky, excuse me for a moment while I add a dop of mampoer to the tea. It helps me think straight.”

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