Kids and Porn - Just Another Thing To Deal With As A Parent

Porn rarely catches me off guard. It did, however, when it was on the television in the basement where my kids had recently had a sleepover. Odder still was that, a) it was on fast forward, and b) the kids were outside. It gives an entirely new meaning to the parental mantra, “Get in here and turn this TV off!”


The first thought I had was, “Porn in fast forward is interesting. Did you know that in fast forward a – umm, never mind.” My second thought was, “What the hell is going on here?” My third thought was, “If Bonnie comes down here we are all in trouble.”

I grabbed the remote and hit Stop. A message came on the screen that said “Do you want to delete this recording?” YES! Well, sorta yes. I mean it was porn and it was already there. What am I saying? Of course yes and where are those boys? “Hold on,” I thought, this was no time for overreacting. It was time for thoughtful consideration.

Now, I am not one of those parents who think their kids do nothing wrong. In fact, I always assume they are doing something wrong. So, how do I approach this conversation? And, how do I keep this from Bonnie?

When I thought the time was right and their friends were gone, I had the boys come into the deepest recesses of the garage. (At this point, and for their personal safety, I still thought it was best if this was kept between us men.) “Boys, I know what was on the TV and I am not happy about this.” (And that was partially true, I really wasn’t happy, but they are thirteen, so I do get it.) They pled completely innocent of all charges and were visibly upset.

And then, either the truth came out, or, it was an ingenious lie. The sleepover was being held in conjunction with a pay-per-view MMA event. My son had asked earlier about recording it. Considering I was paying about $3,000.00 for it, I not only wanted him to tape it, I wanted him to burn it onto DVD’s and sell them out of their lockers at school. He told me that he added time to the recording in case the fights ran late. (Now, I have done this myself for sporting events.) So, after the fight was over, they (supposedly unknowingly) began recording “***** *** Like ** ****” (deleted for discretion) that came on after the fight.

This still left the issue of the fast-forwarding. The reason given was that they wanted to fast forward to the main event, friends came over and they went outside, totally forgetting about the fight. This makes total sense. Anyone with kids knows that when friends come over they would leave in the middle of bowel movement.

Problem mostly solved. I had to tell Bonnie. I wouldn’t even have told my wife about this except for one thing. She pays the bills. This meant that our next cable bill was going to be $80,000 and include porn that her kids recorded. She took it pretty well – very well, actually. Much better than had she thought I did it, in which case she wouldn’t have bought any of that bullshit about “oh, it must have accidentally recorded!” Besides, that stuff is DIS-GUS-TING. I can only watch an hour of it at a time. Yuck.