Little Plato
Gather round, my friends, and I will tell you the story of how I came to believe that a woman's vagina was on the back of her leg.
The Bloggies are taking nominations for “Strangest Opening Line in a Religious Themed Weblog”. Who dares oppose me now?
I was in second grade when I asked my father where babies came from. The year was 1969, and my dad answered like Joe Friday. Nothing but the facts. I learned that the penis went into the vagina and fertilized an egg. I was surprised to find out that a baby emerged from that same mysterious opening nine months later.
I think my father felt thoroughly modern and pleased with himself, but I was left with no context out of which to make sense of a swirling eddy of new words and ideas.
I had biological information, but no sexual frame of reference. I had vocabulary, but no grammar, curiosity without desire. I was all facts and no feeling.
I had no Aristotelian particulars to examine; it would be years before I would actually touch a woman in a sexual way. Out of necessity I was a little Plato, building my knowledge by drawing upon my meager store of wisdom and experience. I exercised pure reason from deep within my little cave, struggling to make sense of the shadows that played across my wall.
I think I did pretty well for an 8-year-old.
I decided that the vagina must be a fairly large opening if babies passed through it. I didn’t think in specific units of measurement, but what I was picturing was about twelve inches in diameter. That seemed reasonable to me. I knew that babies were delicate creatures; one would want plenty of room.
I had an instinctual sense that a gaping hole in a woman’s body might not be safe. Someone might flick a cigarette in there by mistake. I decided that the vagina must open and close, like a giant mouth.
My Freudian readers are leaping to their feet, jabbering excitedly. Sit down and stay away from the comments. I do not want to hear your analysis.
The act of intercourse itself was somewhat frightening to consider. Dangling your penis into a yawning chasm that might snap shut at any moment seemed pretty scary. I admired my dad for braving this Herculean task and felt damn lucky to be alive.
Anyway I was much more interested in exactly where this so-called vagina was located. For months I scrutinized women, especially those wearing bikinis. I saw nothing that looked like a giant mouth. Where was this thing?
Then I had my breakthrough, my moment of enlightenment. Like many boys of that time, I had a G.I. Joe. His legs were attached to his body with a ball and socket joint. If you bent his leg too far forward, bringing the foot up toward the face, the socket popped open and you could see inside his torso.
Eureka!
I decided a woman’s body was built on the same principle. The vagina must be located on the back of one leg, just at the meeting place between buttock and thigh. When the vagina was needed for intercourse or childbirth, the woman would simply stretch her leg forward and open it up.
I worked my G.I. Joe’s legs a few dozen times, popping open the socket and imagining a baby passing through. I felt confident that I had solved the puzzle and quickly lost interest in the whole thing.
A few years passed.
I was eleven when I found some folded paper jammed between the boards of a fence behind our school. It was a Playboy centerfold. I opened it and discovered a whole new world.
No one needed to explain anything to me. I looked and saw that this was good. Flesh of my flesh. After a quick glance at the whole, I let my eyes trickle down her image from top to bottom.
I'll never forget that lingering look.
She was beautiful. I loved the seductive look in her eyes, and that mouth, slightly open with a hint of her tongue showing. Oh God. Everything was a wonder. The universe narrowed. The sight of her breasts made my breath quicken. I wanted to touch them and feel their plump weight. The curves of her hips led my eyes to the little triangle of hair.
Suddenly I knew. Something told me this was the sacred place of sex and babies. Snippets of conversation around the playground and other bits of knowledge came together. Standing there on the street, gazing at this picture, I began to know.
And for the first time, I wanted to be known.
An older boy shattered my moment when he snatched away the centerfold and ran hooting down the street, but I had seen enough. I had been all facts and no emotion; now I was all feeling, and reason escaped me.
My heart was pounding so hard it was a wonder I could think at all.
The Preacher
8:07:21 AM 
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