My parents never had sex. Ever. In fact, I’m fairly certain the three of us Miller siblings were dropped off by the stork. Screw the fact we all share the exact same features as our parents. Genetics is a faulty science, dammit.

My parents never had sex. I told myself that growing up, and I will hug that sentence to my bosom and cherish it’s false truth till the day I’m too old to remember what my name is let alone wonder if my dad ever danced in his underwear in an effort to woo my mother.

Not only did my parents not have sex (which I know without a doubt, as an absolute truth not just because the idea continues to squick me out but also because my bedroom was directly below theirs and I could hear my father’s ankles crack when he got out of bed every morning and never not once did I hear any bed spring action and ohmybabyjeebus I need to stop thinking about this before I poke any holes into my firmly held belief that my parents are and will remain the most asexual creatures to roam the planet) but they never talked about sex.

At least, they never talked about sex with me. Probably because every time they tried to talk to me about sex my eyes would glaze over and I’d run from the room in prudish horror.  I was just never comfortable enough in my own skin to talk about something so natural with the people who poked each other into creating me.

Go figure.

Then I had kids. Presumably, because I had sex. Because I never talked about having sex with my parents and didn’t know it could make babies. Which means I can blame my stretch marks and long boobs on my parents. DAMN THEM!!!  *shakes fist at the heavens*

(I’m totally kidding, Mom.)

I mean, once I had kids I realized there were topics of conversation I was going to have to discuss with my children regardless of my comfort level. I realized it was time to grow up.

And thus began the long maturation of Tanis and her carefully honed skills of avoiding embarrassing subject matter with the use of humour as a tool of distraction. Or so sayeth the psychologist report shoved in the back of my filing cabinet.

With Fric and Frac firmly entrenched in the early years of teenagedom, it seems there hasn’t been a conversation about sex we haven’t broached at one point.

There has been the birds and the bees talk.

The premarital sex is evil and will make your genitals fall off talk.

The please don’t touch yourself there in public talk.

The no, your father and I weren’t having sex on the other side of that closed door, we were praying, talk.

The list could go on. It’s inexhaustable really. Mostly, because once I decided to talk about sex the flood gates opened and the repressed person trapped inside me refused to be stuffed back in.

It turns out, as a parent I am completely opposite as how I was as a child: relaxed and uninhibited. Which is why I have no problems walking around half naked most of the time and encouraging my children to skinny dip when ever possible. (Bonus: skinny dipping means less laundry to wash. Laziness disguised by calling it ecologically friendly is always a win.)

So it is no surprise that in the era of first kisses, my children pounced on my openness the other day and asked about my sex life.

This is what happens when one dusts the house while bellowing along to Madonna’s Poppa Don’t Preach.

“Mom, how old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asked, while her brother looked up from his book, curious to hear my response.

It was in that moment, I cursed myself for being so damn open with them about everything else. It never occurred to me it would come back and bite me on the arse.

I was at a parental crossroad and I knew it. I could ignore the photographic evidence laying about the house proving my children were born out of wedlock and pray their public school education would fail them in basic math skills and flat out lie, or I could be honest.

But, as the wheels spun at Nascar-like speed in my brain, I thought, why do I need to be honest? What do they gain from this conversation? Will I be giving them permission in my honest answer to morph into adolescent whores? Will I betray their trust in me if I tell them the truth? Worse yet, what if I tell them the truth and they finally realize all the street cred I have worked so hard over the years to cultivate with them is destroyed in the seconds to it takes for them to process my response?

I was at a loss and my mouth, I’m sure, was gaping wide open. One moment I’m dusting, the next moment I’m seconds away from admitting to my children I am both cheap and easy. Win!

“What do you mean how old was I when I lost my virginity?” I stammered. My daughter just looked at me and rolled her eyes the way she is so often apt to do at this age and repeated the question, slowly, once more.

“I mean, at what age were you physically when you first had sex with a boy?” Like, duh.

“Well, why do you want to know Fric? Is there something you want to talk about?” Aha! Turn the tables on her! Parenting at it’s finest! Oh crap! What if she’s actually thinking of having sex?? Who gave me permission to parent these children alone??

“No Mom. I was just wondering. Sheesh. I mean, I know you had sex out of wedlock. You keep singing about it.” (Meatloaf for the win!!) “I’m just curious.” Then she added something about how she just wants to get to know me better because clearly my daughter pays attention in Manipulation 101.

Luckily for me, it was at that exact moment the phone rang. Her father’s Spidey senses must have been tingling. I never did answer my child’s question, in part because her father lost his freaking mind when I casually dropped that bomb into his lap and in part because I’m not sure she’s old enough to hear the answer.

It’s not like I was a two bit tramp, polishing the poles of any high school boys who looked my way. In fact, I’ve got left over fingers on one hand (even if you don’t count the thumb as an actual finger) when it comes to the amount of partners I may or may not have had.

I was the girl who wasn’t comfortable in her own skin through adolescence; the last thing I wanted to do was show off all that skin to some boy. I was the very definition of late bloomer.

I’m not ashamed of my past, what it included and how it happened, nor am I ashamed of the boy(s?) who helped shaped me into the woman I am today. Quite the opposite.

But the thought of sharing this information with my child who is stockpiling it inside her mind to help shape the person she will become frightens me more than the mental image of my dad getting naked and asking my mom if she wants to play with his trouser snake.

I want my children to remain children, sexless, innocent children, for as long as possible. Or until I grow so old I forget my own name and they lock me up in an old folk’s home. Either way works for me really.

Obviously I have yet to grow up enough to be able to cope with the idea of my children as being healthy sexual beings.

Thankfully, my children have the attention spans of, well, children and quickly forgot that I hadn’t answered the big V question. But I know it’s there, biding it’s time until it rears it’s ugly head once more and it’s time to face the proverbial music.

The question is, how do I answer it? Do I or don’t I? Is it any of their business?

In the mean time, there is one thing I’m sure of. I’m erasing Madonna from my iPod.

She’s nothing but trouble.

I don’t often use my blog as a drum skin to bang. This is my space to entertain myself and share my life with the people who choose to read it.  But today, I’m picking up my drumsticks and banging away, hoping one person will hear my words and choose their own more carefully the next time they speak.

I’ve written before how using the word retarded affects me. I’m tired of hearing people use the word retarded as their go-to word for stupid or lame* defective and I’m even more annoyed with the people who don’t understand why I take offence to it’s usage.

The word retarded, when used in our modern lexicon doesn’t just mean slow any more. The r-word has become a catch-all word for society to use when frustrated, annoyed or ignorant. It’s spawned a family of new words: the celebutard, the e-tard, and the ever useful, fuck-tard. The word and it’s growing plethora of cousins is all over the internet, filtering into our daily lexicon.

It’s not okay.

Like I tell my kids, words have power. Yes, I understand the meanings of words flux and change over the course of time, like currency in modern life. But this should mean that our standards of morality and the words we use to reflect that morality must be constantly examined and reapplied as time passes. It shouldn’t mean that our standards be abandoned, bankrupted like an American bank in the Great Depression.

When you drop the ‘tard bomb into casual conversation, you are demeaning disabled people and reinforcing the stereotype that mental disabilities are bad and that people who suffer these disabilities are lesser; to be excluded and ignored because they don’t know any better. Heck, it’s not like they even know what the word means right? Who are you hurting?

You are hurting me. You are hurting my kids. You are hurting everyone who loves someone who has been labeled a retard due to how they look, how they speak or how they learn.

It’s not okay to go on twitter and announce that your computer is retarded. Did you mean your computer’s operating system is running slow? You might have meant to convey that your laptop is a piece of shit that doesn’t work and you desperately covet a new one, but instead you just conveyed your ignorance and your lack of respect for the most marginalized, disparaged group of people in the world.

That pisses me off.

This is a word that carries with it a history of social isolation and exlusion. It’s use is a reminder of the culture of neglect people with disabilities are forced to endure every day. By using it, you are reinforcing the idea that handicapped, mentally disabled, people are bad, lesser, sub-human.

It only takes a second for a person to call something retarded, but for my children, for me, it will take a life time to erase the negative connotations associated with the word. In the instance you insert the r-word into your casual conversation, I’m instantly transported to the moment in time I overheard a complete stranger refer to my beautiful child as a retard, or the time my children came home in tears because someone chased them around the playground teasing them about having a retarded brother.

You are reminding me of the endless hours of sitting in a hospital beside my child, worrying for his future, wondering what is going to happen to him when I’m too old or weak to take care of him myself. You are reminding me of all the times I’ve fought to have him included on field trips and of all the times I’ve spent on hold  with some bureaucrat trying to find funding to pay for a necessary service. You are reminding me of the friends I’ve lost because they are made uncomfortable by having my child around them.

When you use that r-word, or any of it’s colourful and less charming derivatives, you are hurting someone. You are discriminating against a people who can’t stand up for themselves and quite frankly, you are pissing me off.

I don’t need a reminder of the dismissive attitude in our society towards my child. I live it every damn day. Every time a child hides in fear behind their mother’s leg because they are scared of the drooling kid in a wheelchair. Every time a grown adult refuses to make eye contact with me or my son. Every time I hear someone I know tell me it’s not a big deal to use the r-word after I chastise them for doing just that.

It is a big deal.

By using that word, whether YOU realize it or not, you are minimizing the struggles of disabled people and their families. You are demeaning, mocking and disrespecting a society of people who have been forced to endure more hardship and struggles than most, simply by nature of their birth.

Oh, and that argument that I’m being to over-sensitive? Too politically correct? Ask yourself how you would feel if you were forced to wear that sign pinned to your back side for others to try and kick.

You can argue that you are taking the word retard back, owning it, but you aren’t. Thirty years plus of having the word retard being used in a derogatory manner isn’t going to be erased. The stereotype isn’t just based on society’s careless use of this word, it resides in society’s treatment of and attitude towards these special people.

There is no defending the use of the r-word in my world. Defending it’s use is not defending freedom of speech, and heck I’d fall on the sword to defend that right, but instead it is the defence of bullies.

That is why you shouldn’t use the r-word anymore.

Because ultimately, no one likes a bully.

Go here to read Jumby’s story. And remember his face next time you want to drop the r-bomb.

*Post edit: My use of the word lame was meant to denote feeble or defective but I forgot society also attributes that word as a disparagement to handicapped and disabled. I’m not perfect either. But I’m willing to learn and try harder. For my kids.

My children are in that special, pain in the arse age; hovering in the ethers of their fast dissipating childhood and trying to catch the winds of adulthood in their wide spread fingers.

Puberty has knocked on my door, pulled up a chair and made itself completely at home. Puberty and myself didn’t get along so well the first time we met, (I still bear the physical and mental scars from our boxing matches) and I’m less than thrilled to have to tangle with this rude house guest once more.

I’m up to my ears in early teenager angst and it’s driving me crazy. Mostly because it’s reminding me of my own inner teenaged fears and insecurities that I try hard to hide under my veneer of polished adulthood.

With bodies breast deep in development and voices deepening, the musky odour of awkward teen development threatens to take over my life. My children struggle to learn who they are and who they want to be as I try to find my patience and point them to who they can be if they if only they find the courage to spread their wings and rise to the challenge of success.

I want my kids to know who they are is good enough to be any thing they want no matter what the crushing power of peer pressure tells them otherwise.

Nobody sticks my babies in a corner, yo.

March to the beat of your own drum, I tell them. Celebrate your differences, it takes all types to make this community we live in interesting, I chant.

They stick their earphones in, roll their eyes at me and hide inside their bedroom walls, crafting new and interesting ways to make me insane. It’s a dance that seems unending these days.

“What would you know?” they argue. “You are a grown up!” they hiss. Like the innocents they are, they forget I wasn’t birthed into this world at the ripe age of 30, completely assured in who I am and never experiencing a moment of self doubt.

So I write here today, to show the world my own inner teenager, the little girl who bangs on her bongo, scared of being shunned by society for daring to be different.

Today, for my children, I am prepared to embarrass myself and reveal some of my most inner secrets, to show them it’s okay to be different.

Today, for my children, I open up the tightly bound pages of Tanis and share the quirks that make me tick. Because I can’t ask my kids to march to their own tunes if I am not prepared to do it myself.

Grab your drumstick and beat on…

I love the band Nickelback.

Oh, I know this sentiment is not popular, I know there is no debate as to whether Nickelback is the worst band of all time. But I love them.

There. I said it. Burn me in effigy for my bad taste. I dig ‘em. I don’t know why, they are one of the ugliest looking band of men I’ve ever seen, their music is simplistic and predictable but I pink puffy heart them.

Something about a dude with long stringy hair who plays a guitar just does it for me.

Which is why I make no bones about my undying love for Billy Ray. Heck, I even wrote an ode for him. Not that he read it. He’s too busy watching his baby girl sing about getting naked with Bret Micheals.

I dug dear Billy when he was shaking his achey breaky heart, playing a small town doctor in a big city hospital and I love him when he pastes on his fake moustache for Hannah Montana. I don’t know why I like him, (although him being fine on the eyes doesn’t hurt) but I do. It’s not the cool thing to admit, but here I am, standing up proudly, admitting my shame.

Growing up, I wanted to be just like Dolly Parton.

Oh, I didn’t want to be a singer or an actress like she is.

I just wanted her boobs. Dolly, you caused many a tear of heart break as I stood before my mirror and wondered when my boobs would grow. I still admire Dolly now, although not for breast related reasons. I admire the fact she’s been married to the same man for more years than I’ve been alive and she has a keen business sense.

Plus she is just pure awesome.

Then there is John Wayne. I’ve been obsessed with this man since I first could say his name.

If there was ever anyone I’d play pilgrim for, he’d be it. Not that the Duke would be interested, he had a thing for Spanish women, but hey, he did have a rumoured affair with Marlene Dietrich, so maybe I would have a chance after all. She was blonde.

I don’t like Brad Pitt or any movie he’s been in except for Seven and Fight Club. I think Angelina Jolie is over-rated as an actress yet oodles better than her younger wannabe, Megan Fox. I hate them both for being the physical opposite of me: brunette, busty and beautiful.

I love Bette Midler and Carol Burnett with the passion of a thousand fiery suns and I don’t understand Conan, Jay or Dave’s sense of humour.

I prefer Star Trek over Star Wars, I hate LOST and the only way you could ever get me to watch any reality television would be to pay me large sums of cash or duct tape me to a chair parked in front of a television set with toothpicks crammed in between my eyelids.

I have watched every episode of Charmed and I liked it. I wish Buffy were real and House just annoys me.

I love opera music but hate ballet and I don’t get why people pay money to enjoy concerts when they could listen to a c.d in the privacy of their own home and not be bothered by the throngs of stupid people around them.

I like Canadian politics and Jean Chretien will always be a personal hero to me, not because of his politics but because he overcame a disability and wasn’t scared to use the Shawinigan handshake against protesters..

I wear cowboy boots and slippers out in public because they are comfortable and I don’t think fashion is important. I am the woman who wore yoga pants and a Canadian Olympic hoodie to a Mad Men dress up party and I enjoyed every minute of it in my Nikes.

I want to learn to play the accordian but I think dancing to a polka is fun only when you’re drunk. I play darts with elderly people every week in our run down farming community hall because old people rock. And they cheat.

I hate beets and parsnips and cilantro and I think buffalo wings are gross. I love fish but hate seafood and I will refuse to eat a steak if it’s not bleeding and trying to move off my plate.

For three years I walked more then 15 kilometres a day because I refused to take public transportation to high school. I didn’t want to be stuffed into an over-crowded bus like a sardine and I was always too scared to ask to sit in an empty seat if someone was sitting next to it.

I like country music but my heart really only sings when I’m listening to Tchaikovsky, Brahms or Strauss.

My book shelves are filled with Erma Bombeck, Ann-Marie MacDonald and Henry David Thoreau and my closet holds more graphic novels than a grown woman ought to ever admit to owning.

My nose is crooked, my right ear pointed and I don’t mind that my thighs jiggle.

I am all of these things, some more embarrassing than others, and yet this does not define me.

I refuse to be defined because I am constantly growing, changing, learning. Just like you.

So dance my sweet babies, and shine on. Be who you are and revel in your uniqueness. I do.

It doesn’t matter what the world thinks of your differences, it only matters that you are in the world, making a difference.

(But know if you start believing Celine Dion is the greatest singer in Canadian history I’m putting you up for adoption.)

(Okay, fine, I’m bluffing. I’ll still love you. But I will mock you. Zealously.)