The other day I was on our PC and noticed my son, turning 15 in a couple of months (oh my God — 15?? No!!) had been to a popular porn site. After ensuring the porn he’d clicked on didn’t involve animals or children, just young women with nice racks, my heart rate returned to normal and I pondered my options.

We have had the sex talk. There is a box of condoms in the downstairs bathroom. I have even had the porn talk, reminding both my children that what they see going on in pornography is not realistic. Normal men and women do not look like that. Nor do they do many of the things they will see being done in pornography. It is not reality, just as the action movies they like to watch are not reality. It is all exaggerated and crazy and cartoonish, and some of it is degrading to women.

And so I decided there was no need to get on his ass about doing what every normal boy and girl his age is doing. If there had been Internet pornography when I was a horny 14-year-old, I reminded myself, I would have been online constantly. In fact, I am a horny 44-year-old, and I have my moments.

And so, when he came upstairs, we had the following conversation.

“Did you know that when you go to certain sites on the Internet, I can tell where you’ve been?” I asked with a cocked eyebrow.

He cocked an eyebrow back. (We have the same eyebrows, it should be noted — naturally arched and easily cock-able).

“No, I didn’t know that,” he replied, looking mortified.

“Well, there’s a way for you to clear your history if you’ve gone somewhere that perhaps you might not want your mother knowing about. Would you like me to show you how?”

“Yes please,” he said.

And I showed him how to clear his history on both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

These are strange times to be a mother.