Dear Azra,

I’m a single mom raising twin boys. They are about that age where they are starting to notice girls (and I’ve started finding a lot of my dishtowels cemented into crumpled heaps). How can I talk to them about masturbation and, more specifically, not to use the dish towels for their emissions? I am not sure my washing machine can handle many more epoxied towels.

Mother of Masturbators

Ah, one of the more awkward phases of parenting. Masturbation can be a sticky subject (pun totally intended!) and dealing with how to handle the resulting mess is a difficult conversation. At least your focus is on the right problem; the state of your hand towels. That, madam, is precisely where your concern should be!

Towels are an underrated commodity. So much so that no one realizes how important those swathes of terry cloth are to their everyday life until they don’t have them anymore. Alternate options for spontaneous emissions can get costly and are not necessarily good for the environment.

So what is a mother to do? The answer is quite obvious.

Forbid your sons from committing the sin of Onan while they are under your roof. Be clear that because they have befouled the sanctity of the hand towels, they cannot indulge while in your home. That’s not saying they can’t partake elsewhere like the shed, school, a friend’s house, or wherever they can find a modicum of privacy and their own seed receptacles.  They just can’t do it at home.

Because they are teens, you may need to install anti- masturbation cameras in all corners of your home. If there’s any hint of hanky panky, then an air horn-like siren will sound, alerting everyone in the neighborhood that one of your sons is about to self-gratify. What happens after that is up to you. Do you have an army of neighbors come and scold/ mock the boy? Do you have your family members douse him in ice cold water? Really, the possibilities are endless. And, at the end of the day, you will have successfully saved your hand towels!

Azra

***Disclaimer***Azra is not someone to take advice from. He’s not even human- he’s an exiled angel that gets his kicks dispensing horrible advice to people. Do not take his advice seriously. It is meant to be satirical and not to be taken literally.