Warning: Herein lies TMI. Tread cautiously.

I have a coupon in my personal e-mail box for 15% off condoms.

Now, you may ask yourself, “What did he sign up for to get on a condom e-mail list?” I don’t subscribe to Playboy magazine if that’s what you’re wondering. No, I actually DID purchase condoms and so, now I’m on every condom and intimacy Web site mailing list, plus a few others that I hadn’t counted on.

But I think it’s funny how easy it is to get condoms now–and anonymously too. I remember buying condoms when I was in high school (see…TMI) and I remember the difficulty in doing so. There were all kinds of unwritten rules to it, such as:

You couldn’t buy them at the local drug store, because there was only one local drug store and inevitably someone you knew was working there and if they were a school acquaintance, you were immediately tagged as either having sex with your girlfriend or cheating on her. Neither rumor being something you necessarily wanted to get out.

Random, out of the way gas stations were good, but the prices were usually so high that you were forced to decide at what price you wanted to be “safe.”

I think there was a school program for condoms, but again, Really? You want to be going into the guidance counselor’s office for condoms, knowingly submitting yourself to the disapproving gaze of someone who considers herself morally superior to every other human being, even though she chain-smoked like a choochoo on her breaks. Not that I’m saying smoking is a “moral” decision, but when you put it together with the empty cardboard boxes of “Absolut” she had beside her desk, you had to figure!

And I happen to know that purchasing condoms today online is way simpler than anything we were forced to do as kids. I mean, I don’t think they even ask your birthday when you purchase them online, so any kid could order them as long as he/she beats mom and dad home and gets to the mail first.

Which makes me wonder which side of this “free condom in schools” issue I stand on. Georgia doesn’t currently have a program like this, but I figure it’s only a matter of time. But regardless, on the one hand, I want to be the one who teaches my boys about sex; and it’s my morality (my ADULT morality, I should clarify)–not the state’s–that I want to instill in them.

On the other hand, I know from personal experience that my lessons and personal attempts at instilling morality in them only go so far. In the end, those teenage hormones will be the ultimate decision-maker in their deciding to have sex at a young age. And since getting condoms isn’t really any kind of barrier like it used to be, I have to wonder which is the lesser of two evils: sex without a condom, or sex with a condom provided by either me (eek!) or through some state institutional program.

Luckily, I have at least 9 years, if you believe the stats about 13-year olds having sex today, before I have to start worrying about it.

Meanwhile, I have this 15% off coupon in my inbox. What the heck? CareerMom doesn’t appear in any hurry to get back on “the pill” and I’m sure as heck in no hurry to have another baby, so…bottom’s up!

(BTW: I’ll be happy to share my coupon with anyone who “needs” them)