My wife and I took our 5 year old to see Lightyear today. It was our first time celebrating Juneteenth as a federal holiday, and who better to spend it with than my wife and son. My son has been a Buzz Lightyear fan since he was 3. He had the costume, the toys, the posters, the backpack… You name it, he most likely owned it at some point in time.
The AMC movie theater was pretty much empty, so we allowed our son to pick what section he wanted to sit in. I’ve watched the Toy Story franchise at home numerous times with my son and I must admit, I was kinda hyped to see one in an actual theater with him.
All was going well until the female character Hawthorne tells Buzz that she got engaged to a woman named Kiko, while he was in space.
Here is the conversation that followed…
MOOCHIE: What’s engaged mean?
ME: It’s when a man ask a woman to be his wife.
MOOCHIE: Oh, I thought Commander [Sic] Heart Torn was a girl?
ME: She is. And her name is Hawthorne.
MOOCHIE: So the commander is a girl and she’s gonna marry a girl?
ME: (uneasy) Yeah, it looks like that is what’s about to happen.
At this point I knew my son was not about to let this go and I was right. My 5 year old doesn’t know the meaning of heterosexual, but now I was going to have to explain what homesexualality is. I thought that the conversation couldn’t get any more awkward, but I was wrong. In the next time dilation montage, Commander Hawthorne and Kiko were holding a baby. If liar liar pants on fire was a look, Moochie gave it to me.
MOOCHIE: Is that their baby?
ME: (LONG PAUSE) I believe so.
MOOCHIE: (PUZZLED) Does one of those girls have chicken nuggets and a penis?
I laughed loudly, because I knew exactly why he asked this question. As soon as he began noticing the differences in his body and his mother’s I began schooling him on basic human anatomy… Boys have penises and girls have vaginas.
My daughter is three years younger than Moochie, so I have had the “where do babies come from?” speech with him. I’ve explained to him frequently, mostly during bathing time that he and I are males. Males have penises and testicles. I showed him on his body where his penis and testicles were. The word testicles tickled him because he could not pronounce it properly so we decided to use “chicken nuggets” in its place.
I also explained to him that his mother is a female and females have vaginas. He had questions and I answered them as best I could.
ME: No, girls do not have chicken nuggets.
To conceive a baby a man places his penis inside a woman’s vagina, the chicken nuggets produce sperm, which fertilizes an egg inside her body.
ME: Good question, but no. The eggs do not have shells.
Basic anatomy is one thing, but having to explain complex concepts on sexuality to a 5 year old is a different bowl of grits.
When I was about 10 years old I had this thing for Liberace. Everything about the nigga was fly to me. The fur coats, diamond rings, the luxury cars… This nigga was everyone I looked up to rolled into one person. (Easy Jones the number man, K Frost the pimp and Bingo Long the drug dealer.) I distinctly remember telling my Uncle I was gonna be the next Liberace and him telling me, “Trust me, you don’t want them kind of problems. You know that nigga a faggot, right?”
First off no, I did not know Liberace was a faggot. Secondly, what the fuck is a faggot? I had to run down to the Library on Bedford and Franklin avenue and look the word up.
Faggot – A bundle of twigs, sticks, or branches bound together.
I could not understand the dis in the definition. I eventually had no choice but to ask one of the librarians. I chose the newest hired lady to ask, because all the others knew my grandmother. I
finally caught her in a secluded part of the building and explained to her what my uncle said and my dilemma with the definition. She smiled and stated frankly that faggot was a derogatory name for gay men. She didn’t judge and I didn’t feel judged. I remember letting out a long “Ohhh!” and then having to look up the word gay.
My point is if I didn’t know this shit at 10 years old how the fuck is my 5 year old expected to know it?
In my 40’s I told my younger brother this story and he said “I knew Liberace was gay before I knew what gay was.”
So be honest with me. Am I the old dude with outdated world views, or is Disney and big media pushing some kind of early sexuality agenda?
