When our eldest daughter was five--this was a couple years back--she came into our bedroom early one morning and started rifling through our nightstand. We had long ago given up defending the “Master Retreat” we'd fantasized about while house-hunting several years back. In place of the relaxing, romantic bed-and-reading chamber we'd envisioned, what had developed was some sort of feral sleep den.
As our daughter marched in,
unannounced of course, and opened one of our drawers, my husband and I suddenly
turned to each other, eyes wide.
There was a box of condoms in there.
These were not just any boring Trojans
with boring packaging that she might ignore. These were condoms in
all the colors, textures and flavors of the rainbow, including
glow-in-the-dark.
This particular box of “party hats,”
as my husband calls them, came in packaging that had cool splotches
of neon graffiti art and silly cartoon characters on it.
All of which was instantly
appealing to a five-year-old.
“What are these?” our daughter
asked.
I panicked, and said the first thing
that came into my head. “Oh! Don't touch those! It's mommy's candy.”
Yes, that's what I called condoms.
Mommy's candy.
“Candy!” she shouted indignantly.
“Why do you get candy?”
“It's grown-up candy,” I said. “You
won't like it. It tastes like coffee.”
Our daughter seemed to accept this, and
the day went by without further mention of it.
The following week, I was vacuuming
under the same daughter's bed, when the vacuum's hose suddenly became
clogged. It made a peculiar high-pitched wheezing sound, like air
being slowly released out of a balloon.
Something rubber was in there.
I untwisted a wire hanger and poked
around in the hose. What came out were four unrolled condoms. I
looked at my daughter, who was standing nearby.
“They're not candy,” she said, with a look of disgust.
“No honey, they're not.”
“What are they?”
“They're to keep mommy and daddy from
having more babies.”
A big smile lit up her sweet little
face. She had never really forgiven us for bringing not one, but two,
younger siblings into her life. Condoms might not be candy, but they
were, in Martha Stewart's words, a very good thing.
