Picking Up The Pieces (Working Title)

Puberty

It was nearing the kids’ fourteenth birthdays, and I kind of figured someone should give them the puberty talk. Chances are they were already going through most of it, and the school had probably been through it with them, but it couldn’t hurt to talk about it, could it? Since I couldn’t speak to Lily about female puberty, I asked Karen to give me a hand. After all, it was either her or Mom, and I didn’t want Lily scarred for life. Karen laughed, but agreed, saying it was a fair swap when I offered to give Lewis the puberty talk as well, even though he was a year behind the twins.

We arranged a date to do all the talking, and I waved to the old man once we’d gotten through the front door. Lily went off with her grandma, and I went in search of Lewis, with Danny in tow. He was sat in his room doing his homework.

"Hey, sport" I smiled at him and he glanced up.

"Hey"

"Got a minute?" I asked and he looked back at his homework.

"All the time in the world" he said, pushing his books away.

I sat down with him and Danny, my mind going blank. Why the fuck did I decide to do this?

 "What do they tell you guys about puberty in school these days?" I asked and Lewis shrugged.

"That it happens. If there were specifics, I wasn't listening" he said, and I couldn’t help laughing when Danny agreed with him. "The condoms made really good water balloons"

Danny giggled. "You did that too?"

"We water bombed the principal by accident" he grinned, making Danny laugh.

I cleared my throat but the two of them kept giggling away to themselves. "Anyway, I figure you guys should probably know what you're up against" I said, letting out a tiny groan at what I was about to talk about. "Uh, well, your voices'll get deeper, for starters" I explained, and Lewis oh so kindly pointed out that my voice wasn’t that deep. I pouted at him and he shrugged.

"How can you know we'll have deeper voices when yours isn't deep?" he asked innocently.

"It is deep" I pouted, too busy trying to recover my battered ego than fight it out. "Anyway, another big thing is hair" I said, knowing full well that I was giving the shittiest puberty talk ever. If I was at work, I could do it fine, but apparently not now.

"Hair?"

I nodded. "Everywhere. You'll look like big foot" I said, laughing at the look of horror on Lewis’ face. "I'm kidding, it won't be everywhere"

"Where then?" he asked, and I listed everywhere minus the crotch. Oh God.

"And, uh..." I trailed off and he shot me a questioning look. I sort of mumbled it out and Lewis giggled a little, asking why I was so embarrassed. "Because I'm no good at talking about this kind of stuff" I whined.

"Then why are you?" he giggled.

"Because someone has to do it" I said, and he just giggled. I tracked back to hair to try and get back on topic, trying to ignore Lewis glancing at my bare legs, and how little hair they had. “You might get some spots, as well”

I covered growth spurts and muscle growth, all the physical kind of stuff, and Lewis spent his time biting back comments in regards to my lack of everything I was talking about. Puberty cut me a shitty deal, okay?

"Right, that's the easy stuff out of the way" I said, taking a deep breath. "There's gonna be some big changes downstairs”

"Downstairs?" Lewis asked.

"You know,down there" I said, not wanting to say it.

Lewis looked down at his crotch, looking back up at me to confirm it. I nodded.