Bram felt a hot flush crawl up his neck. He stared at the dust motes dancing in the projector beam, anywhere but the screen. Then the drawings became photographs. A boy’s face, then a girl’s, their features softening into young adulthood. A boy’s shoulder broadening. A girl’s hip curving.
The projector whirred to life, its spools clicking like nervous hearts. A strip of light pierced the dim room, landing on a portable screen that smelled faintly of dust and old vinyl. On it, the title card appeared in blocky, reassuring letters: Sexuele Voorlichting – Puberty: Sexual Education for Boys and Girls.
The reel slowed. The last frame flickered, then dissolved into white light. The projector clicked off. Bram felt a hot flush crawl up his neck
The final segment showed two teenagers—real ones, in baggy 1991 sweaters—talking to a school nurse. The boy asked, “Is it normal to be scared?” The nurse nodded. “It’s the most normal thing in the world.”
Then Mrs. Visser turned on the overhead lights, harsh and fluorescent. “Questions?” she asked. A boy’s face, then a girl’s, their features
Outside, the last days of 1991 faded into winter. And Bram, still a boy for a few more months, let the whir of the projector fade into a memory he would one day be grateful for. End of story.
The narrator spoke of menstruation. Of wet dreams. Of the word ovulation , which Bram had heard before only as a whisper in the schoolyard, a weapon to throw and run from. But here it was, clinical and gentle, as ordinary as a recipe on television. The projector whirred to life, its spools clicking
The first image was a diagram—a simple line drawing of a boy and a girl, featureless as gingerbread cookies, with arrows pointing to their brains. The hypothalamus. The narrator’s voice was calm, almost sleepy, with the precise enunciation of a public broadcast from the NOS. “Puberty begins not in the legs or the chest, but here, in the command center.”
Mrs. Visser considered this. “Sometimes,” she said. “But not forever.”