I have to admit that what's happening to Petey stems from an adolescent fear of mine.

Back when I was in what we French-Canadians call Secondary 3 (which is like grade 9, I guess), I had my first contact with the wonders of the human body thanks to my very first biology class. Any self-respecting biology class will include the study of the process of reproduction, explaining all the bodily reactions and fluids that are involved as well. So our teacher split the class between the boys and the girls and had us boys go into another class where the other biology teacher was waiting. That's where she explained how men got sexually aroused, why penises get hard, how intercourse works, what sperm is for and so on and so on. I guess the girls talked about ovulation and all that stuff that I don't know about since we were sheltered from it back then.

Now obviously, most of this stuff we all knew about, because you do indeed learn more about sex in the schoolyard than you do in class. But as you know most of the stuff you learn from buddies and loudmouths isn't always true and leaves you impressed with certain things which may or may not be true. You just aren't quite sure. And you're not going to start asking questions or precisions to your pals as to not seem uncool. These lingering myths and scares ride with you until you are either 1) confronted with the situation and have to deal with it, thus realising that you were wrong or 2) having a discussion with someone who knows what he or she is talking about. So when you're still a virgin and have Irish Catholic parents, those occasions to debunk your ideas are few and far between.

When the teacher finished explaining the "miracle" of ejaculation to us, I raised my hand, finally taking a moment to hopefully quell one of the fears I had about copulation. She nodded towards me and with my arm still enthusiastically reaching for the heavens, a quiver in my stomach in anticipation, I asked:

"Does it turn itself off?"

I swear to you the teacher stared at me for a full three seconds in complete and total silence, probably repeating it over in her head in a chance that she didn't hear it right and that it could have sounded like something else.

"Well, yes, of course it stops on its own," was her answer.

Needless to say, my social status in school was doomed from thereon.