Sex education...

As a parent, there are a few letters you'll receive from the school district in the mail that will turn both your and your child's day completely upside down.

For my 12-year-old daughter and I, it was a rather peculiar permission slip a couple of months ago.

First of all, most permission slips begin with the standard verbiage, “I give my child — insert little Johnny's name here on the conveniently provided line — permission to take part in whatever activity the school district has planned.”

This permission slip began in a slightly different direction, something more to the effect of, “I do not want — little Johnny's name, again — participating.” Needless to say, that immediately caught my attention.

This permission slip was for parents to opt their children out of the school's upcoming sex education classes, or, as the kids later referred to it, SE. Actually, my daughter referred to it as “that class that has scarred me for life, so thanks a lot dad” afterwards, but she's a bit of a goof.

Well, she comes by it honestly.

After getting the slip in the mail, I showed it to my daughter, who then begged me to sign it and return it to the school. Apparently, learning about the downfalls of sex and seeing pictures of folks riddled with various sexually transmitted diseases didn't rank very high on her to-do list.

Unfortunately — for her, anyway — I remembered taking sex education when I was a kid and just how much I actually learned, not just about sex and the biological reproductive system, but also the pitfalls of sex at an early age and the effects of peer pressure on the whole thing.

Granted, when I was a kid things were a bit different. First off, we didn't have purity rings or any other kind of jewelry to remind us to keep our virginity intact and no one went around preening about the fact they were or had abstained from sex.

In fact, if I had to take an educated guess, I'd say about 70 percent to 75 percent of the kids in my high school were lying about sex on a regular basis, from whether or not they had had sex, how many people they had sex with or even how often. Looking back, some of the claims we heard now seem impossible or likely culled from a Penthouse forum somewhere.

Simply put, it was incredibly uncool to be a virgin. So, like most of my peers, I told all kinds of lies about sex in the hopes I wouldn't be completely ostracized by my friends and classmates.

Despite all that, I managed to hang on to my virginity almost until graduation. Now, before you start cheering — or laughing, for that matter — you should understand it wasn't because of religious beliefs or any desire to wait for marriage.

It was, without a doubt, because of our school's sex education class.

To really understand, you have to realize our classes were set up in two parts. During the first part of the classes everything was co-ed and we learned the basics about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the rest of the normal biological fare.

For the most part, us guys did what we always did, snickering and interjecting “that's what she said” every chance we got. In all, it was actually pretty fun, especially if you were into science like I was.

I think it would be safe to say that at the end of the first half of the classes, my opinions — and, more importantly, my desire to be the youngest among my friends to ditch my virginity — remained unchanged.

However, that all changed with the second half of sex education.

First of all, they split up the guys and girls, which was a dead giveaway to me and my friends they were going to show something to the girls that we undoubtedly wanted to see. Bear in mind, this was all well before the internet, where you can see a pelvic exam online for a membership fee to some skeevy site.

Oh, and try we did to get in there, even donning disguises, but that's for another column I'll hopefully never find time to write.

What followed in that classroom full of boys was, well, nothing short of horrific. It started off with a video on how to do a testicular exam, and while I fully realize that is a medical procedure and necessary for all men, I was not ready to see some dude who looked like he was, uh, playing with himself in the shower.

As bad as that may have been, the next video — a never-ending parade of high resolution pictures of genitalia infected with every STD known to man — made me seriously consider tossing my cookies. Under each picture was the name of the disease in large, yellow block letters.

However, the final video was what got me. Just like a well-placed shot to the groin from a 13-year-old gymnast on crack cocaine, it not only took the wind out of my sails, it managed to completely dissolve my desire to have sex.

It was a video about an average-enough looking teen named Jimmy. You see, Jimmy was bright and was going to go to college and have a fruitful life ... then Jimmy got Jill pregnant. Cue the horror movie music!

They showed Jimmy dropping out of school to get a job as a fry cook at some fast food restaurant, then getting a second job because, whether or not you know this, diapers are an unholy kind of expensive. We saw Jimmy getting up at 1 a.m. to feed and change the baby, then 2 a.m., then 3 a.m., as our hero quickly began to look a lot like a ghost of his former self.

The directors of this video spared no emotion, either, as we watched Jill slowly put on weight through the show. Long gone was the cheerleader outfit, which was quickly replaced by a moomoo and bright pink hair curlers. Oh, poor Jimmy, his life was ruined, all because he had sex as a teen.

Needless to say, my daughter came home from her turn at sex education with plenty of facts and opinions, some of which she agreed with and others she didn't. And, on at least one occasion, she came home with that “I've been scarred by sex education class” look on her face.

Honestly, I couldn't have been more pleased.