Of Sex Education And Such...

I boarded a plane for Vegas yesterday. I was running behind because I went to work. I've learned that if I go, I never leave. Well, not never, but you get what I'm saying. It was a crazy weekend around that place, thus I was sleep deprived and behind so there were things that needed to get done. Long story short, my good friend at work offered to drive me to the airport and it's a good thing she did. I would've missed my plane otherwise an if I had, I would've missed out on a great conversation.

Let me set this up for you.

Front row, aisle seat. Middle seat empty, window seat taken by a dog. And his service trainer, a girl in her mid-to-late 20s.

Lots of people walk by, nobody wants to sit between two young, attractive if I must say so myself, ladies.

And then, he sits down. A 20-something dude.

"This seat taken?"
"Nope, all yours."

We take off, fairly bumpy ascension and things are great. I whip out my "Ladies' Home Journal" and "Woman's Day" magazines and get to reading about how to get my body back to it's 20s (oh, wait), how to balance life as a stay-at-home mom with three kids who have 15 differed activities a day (not so much), and the best fall paint colors for your built-in reading nook (if only). In all honesty, I bought the magazines because one cover had a tasty-looking chicken pot pie (it was 3:00pm and I hadn't eaten lunch) and the other had Miranda Lambert (she's from Texas, isn't stick thin and seems like a normal 28-year old).

I digress. I'm reading and he breaks the silence with service dog training cute 20-something year old. We'll call her Beth. He can be Yao because he had some Asian descent in him.

"Cute dog." (Really, that's all you've got?) "what's his name?"

"Thanks, Niko."

"That's cool. He's a service dog, huh?" (What, the blue best with the embroidered "service animal" in yellow didn't give it away?)

"Yeah, we're getting there. He's obviously still in training."

They continue on...what do you do? Where do you live? What is your ultimate career goal? They actually had quite a bit in common. Both engineers, one electrical, the other software. Both have had opportunities to go into management but turned it down because the extra work and stress wasn't worth the small pay increase to them (and could I have added to THAT conversation). Both had parents that were awesome but a little pushy in terms of the direction of their career. In my head, I was thinking, "this could actually be a really neat match." And it was at this point that I was reminded of how extremely glad I wasn't in the dating world anymore.

They kept talking, I may have dozed off for a few minutes and when I came to again, it all went downhill.

I must have missed how they got to this point, but he began talking about sexual activity in young people. I whipped my head around a quick 90 degrees with my jaw on the floor. Okay, maybe not. And it went something like this.

"I was reading this study about how there's been a decline in out-of-wedlock intercourse in younger people. The people on the 'right' believe it has to do with abstinence education and of course, those on the 'left' think it has everything to do with basic sex education in the school system." She's kind of nodding, mm-hmm'ing along and I'm thinking, "dude, you just killed the conversation."

He continues, "I have my own theory, and maybe it's because of my job. I think it has something to do with the increase of usage of video games. I mean, think about it. Kids these days aren't running outside, playing creative made-up games or reading and writing. They're in front of the TV trying to beat another kid at Madden." SERIOUSLY?!? Did you just bring sex AND video games into the same conversation?

I mean, I couldn't agree with him more about the non creative play, But that's an entire other blog entry.

"I truly believe they are too busy thumbing their way through aliens and combat to thunk about sex."

I tried really really hard to not laugh out loud. Not because I thought it was necessarily funny, but it was definitely entertaining. Had I been sitting in her seat I am not sure what I would've done.

I think the thing that most surprised me is that she actually continued on with being engaged in conversation and started talking about Super Nintendo and her favorite games - Donkey Kong, Super Mario 3, etc. I think she and I could probably be good friends.

I'm not sure why I was so caught off guard but I was. I just find it interesting that his theory revolved around another guy obsession. They're suppressing their hormonal tendencies and thoughts on sex with other barbaric and possible hormonal ideations like violence. I wonder if it would be basis for a study...

He concluded the overall conversation with a question on whether training a service dog could be compared with training a boyfriend. And then he asked if the boys got a vest, too. That's when I checked out because I just couldn't take it anymore. Needless to say, I'm not so sure Beth and Yao will be exchanging vows but at least it helped the two hours fly by. Pun intended.