Sex Ed with Red Wigglers

No, I'm dead serious.


Someday when I have kiddos in school I want to "moonlight" as a school nurse. I dream of offering a healthy and productive (pun.. intended?) atmosphere for the education of sex for our society's youth.


I currently volunteer at APPLE, the elementary school program that I attended, as a "parent" reader for five first and second graders. Recently one of my readers chose a favorite dessert book (as opposed to a vegetable/challenging book) called Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. Amelia loved this book, and therefore, hence, ergo she exhibited a surprising fascination with worms.


Coincidentally, I recently attended the increasingly popular Worm Bin workshop presented by avid worm goddess (she literally generates entire communities and worlds of worms out of your garbage heap) the lovely Miss Mariah McKay. During this presentation on composting Inlanders and coffee grounds in your apartment, I had an epiphany. As petite and stylish twenty-something Mariah reaches into her bin and produces a handful of rotting fruit (in a productive anti-green house gas way) and dead leaves (totally alive with beneficial microbes) she exclaims "oh these two red wigglers are having sex!" Then, to test the audiences professed commitment to spreading the worm-bin love, she dumps her handful into my bare hands and we all take turns feigning comfort as we examine the twisty-tie couplet of wormies.


Jane's Epiphany: Kids (who like bugs and stuff and learning) + Worms (who like to reproduce and don't look particularly risque when doing so: they don't have penises or vulvas or faces for that matter*) = perfect opportunity to bring up where babies come from (a topic near and dear to my heart for political/health/community/feminism/humanity/and other important reasons). 


I believe if a young school-aged child (I'm suggesting as fresh as a four-year-old here folks**) was taught where babies came from by holding in their hands two wormies who were knotted together, sharing their bodies, organs and hormones to create another wormie, we could eradicate the playground taboo of gross and mysterious sex, and the mis-education thereof, be rid of parental and teacher squeamishness and instruction ineptitude, say ciao to uninformed curiosities leading to adolescent sexual experimentation resulting in negative outcomes (Spokane's teen preggo rate remains slightly higher than average) and boom, we've got a therapeutic introduction to comprehensive sex-ed (not to mention composting and gardening)!

* Except for the whole hermaphrodite component of worm fornication, which might require a collective viewing of "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" as a pre-requisite***

** Statistically boys experiment with masturbation at the tender age of 8: a full two years before standard human growth and development and sexual education begins in primary school. Teach 'em! Don't make 'em guess and feel isolated!

*** Ok, maybe I took it one step too far, no "Hedwig.." I take it back.