Modine on ... S-E-X

It used to be, when you talked about abstinence, you was talking about not eating meat on Friday, says my mother-in-law, Miss Larda.

"Nobody bragged about abstaining from sex," she says to me. "That was like saying you was abstaining from robbing banks. And a virgin was either the Blessed Mother or olive oil. Otherwise you didn't discuss it."

You didn't even say the word sex out loud in her day. You spelled it out in a whisper. I guess you even whispered when you talked about anything related to S-E-X. Which was hard on Miss Larda because she is half deaf anyway -- she grew up in a house next to one of them civil defense blasters that used to sound off every day at noon. So she heard a lot of them words wrong.

For instance, she thinks Simonizing is a crime against nature.

And you know them men who prance around the French Quarter in high heels and short skirts? She refers to them as transformers. (I myself used to say that. I must have got it from her. Finally my daughter Gumdrop explained to me that the proper word is drag queen.)

So when my daughter Gumdrop asks if it is all right to move out the dorms at LSU and rent a apartment with her friends Ralph and Bubba, I was surprised Miss Larda didn't say nothing. Now, Ralph and Bubba are Gumdrop's platonic friends. Just like on Three's Company. Her real boyfriend is Slime, who she has been dating since they were juniors in high school. He is in New Orleans studying to be a air conditioning repair specialist, and he is probably going to be a very rich man someday.

Anyway, I mention her getting this apartment to Miss Larda and she says it sounds like a good way to save money. Now that I think about it, I should have realized that she didn't understand what I was saying. When I said Ralph and Bubba, she heard Ralphie -- she actually had a girl friend named that once, short for Ralphina -- and Bubbles. Or maybe that's what she wanted to hear.

So I give Gumdrop my old kitchen table and a bookshelf from out in the back shed and I even buy her a inflatable armchair for her room. Later on she calls and tells me Ralph and Bubba liked that armchair so much, she put it out in the living room so they could sit in it too. Which I think ain't too smart, because them boys are big, and when they plop down on a inflatable chair, it will sooner or later explode.

Then she comes home for spring break. Miss Larda comes by for a cup of coffee and asks Gumdrop how her roommates are doing. Gumdrop says it is working out good, because she is used to having a brother, and she knows how to guilt them into things like not leaving their jock straps laying around on the coffee table.

"Well," I say, "has either of them popped your chair yet?" And Gumdrop says, "Not yet."

And then Miss Larda leaps up from her chair and says she cannot believe her ears, and pardon her, but she better start shopping for baby clothes. And she storms out.

Gumdrop and me look at each other. We got no idea what happened.

I give Miss Larda some time to cool down and then I call her on the phone. She is still mad. She says she assumed Gumdrops' roommates were girls, but just now she was informed otherwise, and then the very next minute she hears me inquire, just like it was NOTHING if, if -- I know she is going to say something about sex and is thinking up a ladylike way to put it -- she finally blurts out "if her boy roommates have had CARNIVAL KNOWLEDGE of her."

Carnival knowledge. It takes a while for that to sink in. Then I realize she ain't talking about Mardi Gras. She must have misheard the word chair and took it for something else. She is thinking the worst.

I can't handle this. I tell Gumdrop she got to go over and talk to her grandma.

Gumdrop tells me later, it is a terrible scene. Miss Larda don't know them modern tricks for ignoring you, like saying "Talk to the hand," or sticking your fingers in your ears and singing, "La-la-la," but she don't need them. Every time Gumdrop opens her mouth, Miss Larda says, "Don't say it. Your poor father would spin in his grave." As if her father's ghost was standing around listening. If he was, he'd be too busy looking for a beer to pay attention. Finally Gumdrop reaches up in the cabinet and grabs down a bottle of olive oil.

"Grandma," she says, Me and this olive oil are alike." Miss Larda goes quiet. Finally she says. "How can you be extra virgin?" Gumdrop says it is because she is very, very pure. And she explains that she got her own bedroom and bathroom and there ain't no funny business going on.

Miss Larda gets up from the table and picks up the olive oil and fries up a bunch of egg plants, which is how she calms herself down. Later she brings some over in a casserole dish to make peace. I tell her I am glad to see them, because it happens to be a Friday in Lent, so I got to abstain.

We look at each other. "Don't say no more, Modine," she says. And I don't.