When my son got his Xbox for Christmas, it had to be hooked up to our TV in the living room. It was a new flat screen TV, and since my son had one of those crappy, dinosaur TVs in his room, it made perfect sense. For him, not me. I have an open floor plan in my home, which means the TV room is near the dining room is near the kitchen is near the living room, if that makes sense.
The dining room doubles as my “office.” Every day, I get to listen to hyper preteen boys yelling and reveling in the game of Minecraft while I try to get some work done. Normally I pride myself on being able to work through distractions, what with the diva barking all day long at every creature that dares to breathe around her and the parakeets that don’t have a melodic bone in their feathery bodies.
But it eventually got to the point where the words Fuck, Shit, and Bitch being spewed from the mouth of babes was no longer conducive to my romance writing. I couldn’t concentrate anymore, so something drastic had to be done. (Something other than shipping them off to Abu Dhabi, which was my first choice.) Part of the fun of these Xbox games is being able to do multiplayer with split screens. Apparently, one can’t do that on a crappy, archaic TV, which would have been nice to know before moving all the equipment into my son’s room. Son had a fit of course, so singlewritermom had to get a new TV for her spoiled son to ensure her peace-of-mind.
Once the electronic devil was hooked up to my son’s new TV and the boys were ensconced in my son’s bedroom, I breathed a sigh of relief. With the bedroom door shut, their voices were muffled. I didn’t have to listen to the garbage that came out of their mouths any longer. But then I realized I could no longer hear the garbage coming out of their mouths, which meant I no longer knew what they were talking about. Which could be dangerous. There was no monitoring of mouths. And no monitoring of eyes. Which meant…
…the possibilities for porn were endless.
A mother never had to worry about any of this when I was growing up. If someone wanted to watch porn they had to go to a theater with sticky floors in Times Square. Or buy a shoddy VHS tape from a sex shop in Times Square. I didn’t watch my first porn until college, and it was only because my friends thought it’d be a hoot to go to a porn theater in Italy. It was a hoot until this guy plopped himself down in the empty seat next to my friend and started wanking it.
You can access the internet on all game systems if you have Wifi. Internet = Porn. Boys = Porn. My son is still innocent in my eyes, but when my neighbor told me she found out one of my son’s friends had been watching porn on the family’s communal laptop, well, I realized my “innocent” boy could be corrupted by one of his horny friends at any moment.
I know you can put parental controls on these systems, but it would require a boatload of changes to accounts, etc. and I will indeed do it, but for the moment, I had to channel my inner dominatrix and have a porn talk with the boys. (If there’s anything I know about talking to boys, or any males, it is to be brief. The last thing they want to hear is long-winded explanations about why they shouldn’t do something. Get to the point, and quickly.)
“Listen up,” I told them. “If I catch anyone watching porn, you will be in so much trouble my head will explode.”
They looked up at me, wide-eyed and embarrassed that I was even having a conversation with them about porn.
“You will never be allowed inside this house again.” I turned to my son. “And you, will have your Xbox taken away forever. Understand?”
“Yeah,” they murmured and went back to playing their game.
Just to seal the threat I let them know I could track their every viewing move on my computer, and I threw an extra arched eyebrow at my son’s potential porn-addicted friend.
Would I have had to make this announcement to my daughter (if I had one) and her friends? I think not. The only thing we girls did when we were younger was mash our naked Barbie and Ken dolls together. That’s mild compared to the kink that’s out there today.
May 23, 2013 @ 11:20:47
This made me smile because it brought back the memory of when I found my son’s first porn DVD when he was 15. I heavily monitored on-line usage so it never dawned on me that kids would get DVD’s.
It was thrown carelessly in a pile of his dirty laundry that I was going to wash. I was mortified. There was a picture of the girls on the DVD! I screamed for my husband (I got remarried when my son was 13) as if I had seen a dead body in the corner of his room, and he came running downstairs. I showed him the DVD and he said, “It’s okay babe. It’s totally normal at his age.”
Fuck that!
And my husband then said, I’ll talk to him, and if there is any need for concern I’ll let you know.
I threw the thing out and my son did his own laundry from that point forward.
May 23, 2013 @ 16:38:36
I’m sure it is normal for a 15 yr old boy, but I still feel your pain. The thing is, if son is a virgin, do you really want his first introduction to sex (other than sex ed) to be hardcore graphic porn with women who look like fake Barbies? Looking at nude pictures of women a la Playboy is one thing. Seeing people “doing it” up the butt is a whole ‘nother enchilada.
May 23, 2013 @ 19:10:46
It is a (w)hole ‘nother enchilada. 🙂
But the world is a changin’.
May 23, 2013 @ 22:08:22
Ahaha! I see you got that one.
May 23, 2013 @ 23:09:47
Can’t get much by me my friend. 😉
May 23, 2013 @ 12:38:17
Heh, that shows what you know. I saw my first porn at a friend’s birthday party–her parents were out, so maybe it wasn’t a birthday, but we watched a few minutes of the porn video she found in their room.
May 23, 2013 @ 16:43:55
And then there’s those scenarios like you just descibed. The friends. “Hey, look what I found in my parent’s, brother’s, uncle’s, housekeeper’s room…” Even without all that, kids can watch porn on their phone, for goodness sake! Sometimes I’d like to marry/divorce the Internet.
May 23, 2013 @ 14:48:45
UGH! I dread the day I have to have that conversation with my son! Sounds like you handled it well though. And,you both have awesome T.V’s 🙂
May 23, 2013 @ 16:51:18
And you know the conversation is coming way before you’re ready for it! We’ll have to think up the equivalent of “If you masturbate, you’ll go blind.” How about: “If you watch too much porn, your eyes will get bigger and your penis will get smaller.” “The more porn you watch, the less your future income.” “Watching porn affects your ability to drive a car.”
May 23, 2013 @ 16:58:54
How about “Watching porn affects your ability to relate to real girls.”?
May 23, 2013 @ 22:07:35
You mean telling him the truth? That’s a novel concept.
May 26, 2013 @ 01:53:08
So, I loved this and I think you handled it great. You are so spot on when you say that brevity is the key with men or boys. haha. My dad’s sex talk to me started when he turned down the car radio and said this: “Don’t screw anyone til you’re 18 or 19 and when you do, wear a rubber.” Boom. Done. 10 seconds. Radio back on.
Mom’s talk started with the worse sentence on Earth: “I know you know about masturbation.” We were in the car on the way home from the grocery store and I was unable to escape, and seriously considering self immolation. She continues with the second worse sentence on Earth: “I was watching Oprah.” Turns out – or what I gathered from her babble as I was trying to stuff zucchini in my ears – she was warning me off of erotic asphyxiation.
So, it wasn’t my dad’s sex talk that was bad, it was my mom’s ‘don’t strangle yourself when you wank’ talk that really haunts me to this day.
In any event – you did great.
May 26, 2013 @ 19:18:06
First, let me say I read your comment while drinking my morning coffee and you almost made me choke on it. So I thank you for that. Later, I was on my treadmill thinking about your comment. I laughed again, causing myself to lose focus and trip, thus almost killing myself, so I thank you for that. I’m reading it again now, and I’m still laughing.
“I was watching Oprah…” Ahaha! That is what women always said! When she was still on TV, my stepmom used to say that ALL the time and my dad would just roll his eyes. I’ve even been known to say it. (If it was on Oprah, then it must be true.)
“Don’t strangle yourself when you wank” is pure gold, because I can see myself being more concerned with that than anything else. I’d warn my son as well, of course now that I know I’d scar him for life, I may have to rethink my game plan.
You so need to do a post on this, if you haven’t already. So, so funny! See, I’m laughing again.
May 27, 2013 @ 18:13:43
When my son was younger he pretty much killed the family laptop with viruses from downloading so much porn. However, getting your son his own TV in his room is WORTH the peace of mind you need to write–don’t ever regret that decision.
May 27, 2013 @ 19:23:50
I can’t believe you’re going to leave me hanging by not telling me how you dealt with the issue at hand (Pun intended!).
May 29, 2013 @ 01:05:59
Hehehahahaha – nice pun! I know you’re writing to MM, but to weigh in, you are NOT going to keep him from looking at porn. Teenage boys, and girls for that matter, are going through these enormous hormonal changes and a burgeoning sexual appetite is a part of that. At 12, bam, for the first time in their lives, they are incredibly horny. Can you imagine not being horny one day and then being controlled by your groin the next? Thus, teens find a way to look at naked people. I sure did; and you probably did.
You did the right thing by laying down the law, you were reasonable, showed you weren’t aloof, and stated what you weren’t going to put up with. If he screws up you have to stand by your word or he’ll know you’re not going to go through with your threats. Just make sure he doesn’t catch you watching porn or you are screwed! (pun…but surely not as good as yours..)
May 30, 2013 @ 16:28:52
Oh no, I make sure to do all my porn watching when he’s not home 🙂
Not to change the subject, but to change the subject from porn to cats, you NEED to watch this video. I thought of your blog post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/10/sad-cat-diary-video_n_3251207.html
Jun 01, 2013 @ 04:13:51
I will allow two rubs only, a third one and I will bite the shit out of them as per protocol. HHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH Holy crap, that is hilarious!