Memory Snapshot

When I was nine or ten years old, I was in the family van with my mom, dad, and sister heading back home from Vincennes. My sister would have been 21 or 22 at this time, and I was a year or two away from my first sex ed class. Our parents sat in front, and we were sitting behind them. I was staring out the window and mulling over a word I'd been hearing at school, trying to work out what it meant. I turned to my sister.

"Are you a virgin?" I asked with no warning whatsoever.

There was a pause. "No." There was complete silence up front, and our parents stared. straight. ahead.

I nodded, astonished that my sister had most likely taken her clothes off and kissed someone. My formative brain attempted to process the information, and I eventually went back to thinking about something that was actually interesting, like sharks.