What's a whorehouse?

New Store in Denver: Men's Whorehouse
Originally uploaded by Jeffrey Beall

So yesterday Emery is watching TV upstairs - some program called Kirby, which I have never actually sat down and watched. I hear parents all the time saying, "I watched the program and felt it was ok..." Well, I really have never done that. I have listened to the program from another room and the program is on Noggin or PBS or Nickelodeon. I have overheard the program. I trust it's ok.

But yesterday, Emery comes down the stairs from watching this show and says to me, "Mom, what's a whorehouse?" I start to wonder if giving him my secret code was really stupid or what in the world is he watching up there? I ask him that, "What are you watching up there?" Kirby he says, but they may have said the H word. And something about a whorehouse. What's the H word I say? I tell him to just say it - it's only a word. And we don't want him to go around saying Hell, not because it's a bad word but because it's common and sounds low rent for kids to cuss. Doug and I stumble a bit trying to explain a whorehouse, and we say things like house of ill repute which really doesn't go any further in explaining the concept, in fact it is obviously purposefully vague.

Finally I say that a whorehouse is a place where someone can pay for sex. Someone can pay someone else to have sex with them. I've always tried to be very factual and even casual about the topic of sex or our anatomy or procreation. But I have to admit, explaining deviant behavior, something lusty and illicit, is a different proposition.

In end, Emery has the show paused upstairs (it was OnDemand) and he says, "Let me just show you." As he's rewinding he's saying, "I think they said something like Hell up in a whorehouse" and I am trying to imagine the innocent circumstance that would permit Kirby or any show to throw around the word whorehouse. When the snippet plays I realize the animated character says, "Hello poorhouse" as in "if such-and-such happens it'll be Hello Poorhouse!"

I am relieved (that he wasn't watching a dirty, damaging show) and then immediately realize that we explained this whole thing about whorehouse to him when we really didn't have to. Really though, explaining a poorhouse is much harder.