This Is An Actual Letter

Written to the Sunday Age’s “Sunday Life” magazine this past weekend, in response to an article by well-known writer/exoskeleton Mia Freedman. The letter is from one Glenda Hanks, of Newport, NSW:

Oh, Mia – I love itl My favourite story about this subject comes from my sister’s friend. This friend called her vagina her “bear” (who knows why). They lived in a small country town and one day she had to take her son to the local nurse to get a blood sample. He was naturally nervous about the ordeal, but was reassured by the elderly nurse that if he was a very brave boy and kept very still, she would show him her bear. He was far too distressed to notice the small stuffed animal on her desk!

I want you to think very carefully about Glenda’s “friend” (we know, Glenda, WE KNOW). OK, first of all, she calls her vagina her “bear”. She says “who knows why”, but it seems pretty obvious – massive head trauma.

Her “bear”??? Can anyone think of any even remotely sensible reason to cal your vagina a bear?

Because it eats people?

It’s inactive during the winter months?

It likes honey?

It’s found throughout North America and Europe, but some species can also be found in Asia and South America?

It’s good for catching salmon?

Zookeepers give it frozen fruit on hot days?

It’s covered in fu- oh, wait.

OK, so we’ve established that Glenda’s demented “friend” is demented and calls her vagina a bear. BUT surely even demented people stop short of breezily using such euphemisms to their young children. What sort of sick linguistic experiment is going on here that she thought it would be a good idea to cause her son to forever associate the word “bear” with vaginas? Did she think that would help him in life? Did she think, for example, that it would make for a simple, non-traumatic experience of children’s literature? Did she think it would add some extra spice to the first time he heard someone offer a bear-hug?

What, in short, was the crazy old tart thinking?

BUT, to be fair and apportion blame equally, what was wrong with this kid? Had he really never heard the word bear in any other context? Was he so ignorant it didn’t occur to him that maybe the nurse was talking about something else?

Or had his mother deliberately kept all knowledge of actual bears from him during his formative years so that her bear would be the only bear he would ever know, in a scenario not unlike what I imagine to be the plot of the movie “Bad Boy Bubby” which I have never seen?

Then again, maybe he DID know what bears were, and is genuinely frightened of them, thinking the elderly nurse was about to unleash a massive omnivorous mammal on him.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well – the nurse DID show him her vagina, and he enjoyed it immensely.

The end.