We’re generally a household of slight prudes here. I still get embarrassed when Ned strips naked and runs around the house singing the Nekkid Nekkid song and doing the related Nekkid Nekkid dance. Well, in his defence he is three and does like a bit of a breeze round his nether region.
You can then imagine my HORROR when the boy told me that “sex games are a bit rubbish daddy“. He’s not quite 8 years old. Once I stopped hyper-ventilating, I decided it was time to carefully and tactfully discuss the situation with him. The thoughts going through my mind were, “what’s he seen?”, “what’s he been doing?” and so on and so forth, right up to the point where I was getting myself in a real flap.
Me: Can you tell me more about these rubbish sex games?
Boy: Some of them are no good. You get all excited and then nothing happens
Me: … why is that then?
Boy: Well, you don’t know what you’re getting with sex games. Some just don’t work or turn out to be really dirty.
Me: Have you played any of them? Or has someone told you about them at school?
Boy: Dave* says his daddy gets them for him. For the Playstation.
Me: Umm. How do you spell sex?
Boy: C-E-X, sex.
Me: Lord God in Heaven, we thank you for this small yet important mercy.
After some further probing it turns out the boy has a friend at school who likes playing videogames, much like he does, but his dad buys them from Computer Exchange in the town centre. Computer Exchanges logo is the C from Computer with the EX from Exchange. It’s a chain that has it’s roots in central London; I used to buy imported Sega Saturn and Playstation games from there in the late 90’s but I never considered that the C could be pronounced as a soft C, because the C in computer is a hard C. So sex games are cex games, games bought second hand from CEX/Computer Exchange and some of them don’t work or come in rather tatty cases.
I can tell you the sense of relief was actually palpable. My arms and legs went weak and I felt a bit light-headed. Hopefully it’s a conversation that won’t happen at any damn point in the future or at least will happen but when the lady wife is at home too.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.