I really enjoyed your detailed recollections of the teenage you compared to YOU 2.0. Your writing puts your readers right there with you.

Thanks for reminding me what my 20s were all about. It has been 50 years since I mistakenly tied my self-esteem to my ability to “get laid“.

I think I’m on ME 7.1 now. The code was entirely rewritten for today’s modern operating systems. It crashes much less and operates smoothly. But the product is no longer actively supported as it is near end of life. But surprisingly it still works and is responsive to commands.

You wrote:

If you’re ready, and you want to, then do it. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad, ashamed, or less-than for making that choice.

I totally agree with your sentiments, and yet I felt something was missing. Was I so far removed from 23 that what I thought was important is now just taken for granted?

Two things, and they are not only applicable to losing one’s virginity.

First, the TALK. What will we do if a pregnancy results? How will we practice safer sex and birth control?

Back then, often we heard or read stories from pregnant girls that said “We got carried away and it just happened. And it was my first time.” Were those just intended to make us frightened?

From my memories of my 20s, before AIDS, abortion, and virulent STDs, the talk was as simple as “Are you on the pill?”. That was easy to ask while clothes were still on but sex had become a real possibility.

There were no “what if . . .?” discussions. We believed the pill was 100% reliable and our ability to pull out in time was equally 100%. On the pill or nor, we had all the answers. After all, we knew we invented sex. But we never asked “What are you into?”

So, I was concerned that your advice to “just do it” left out a lot of important details for young people who were or are in your same situation. Don’t “just do it” unless you are adult enough to have the TALK.

Yes, it is clinical. The “What if…?” questions should not be asked at the last minute during foreplay. Guaranteed, the party’s over.

Then again maybe I’m too old to understand modern times. It seems nowadays, watching online porn it a rite of passages into one's teen aged years. All we got was a book with pencil drawings.

Porn was only shown in seedy theaters with sticky floors in skid row areas of the city. We had Playboy and Penthouse. Playboy did have excellent interviews and the Penthouse letters section were more arousing than the staged photos. Were the letters even real or concocted by the writers at Penthouse who were good at writing male fantasies?

When I was in my 20s we carried condoms in our wallet, just in case we got “lucky”. Most of the time we didn’t, so by the time we did, the condom was old and had been riding around in our back pockets for months. Probably not very reliable.

Today, is it the woman who carries the condoms because she already knows they will be used? And is she the one who insists on their use even if she is also using chemical birth control? In today’s sex-ed classes, do students practice putting a condom on a banana or cucumber?

I’m really ignorant and I have no friends in their 20s I could ask without being thought of as pervy.

Are my concerns about your article in any way legitimate? Or has the world changed and left me in the dust?

Oh, I almost forgot about the second omission.

You forgot to mention that consensual sex can be more often than not, intrinsically FUN. For one night or a lifetime.

Thanks for sharing your very personal story.