I don’t know why it popped into my mind, but as I was folding laundry I remembered out of the blue how confusing and unhelpful the term “heavy petting” was for me as a pre-teen and teen. Honestly I still don’t understand it. I’m interested to know where I heard it, because I am pretty sure it was from dated teen fiction I checked out of the library AND ALSO from youth pastors AND from the Christian books for teens we had at my house. I had a mental picture of someone running their hand along someone else’s side, like from shoulder down to hip, WITH STRONG PRESSURE (to make it HEAVY). I was imagining this happening in a car: the teens would be on their sides facing each other from their respective seats in the car, seats tilted back, and I pictured the boy teen (I definitely, definitely, definitely pictured the boy teen being the one doing the Heavy Petting) running his hand down the girl’s side, repeatedly and probably kind of uncomfortably. It was hard to understand why God/parents/pastors/anyone would be so opposed—but it also didn’t seem like a temptation it would be very difficult to resist, so I did not worry too much.
I remember when I was in 7th or 8th grade, a couple of girls from the public school transferred to our Christian school. This represented a roughly 33% increase in the number of girls in our class, which was a combined 6th-7th or 7th-8th grade class, I don’t remember which year it was. These girls taught us right off the bat that knee socks (we all wore them) were NOT COOL, and showed us how to slouch them—and for this I thank them, even though my thin dressy knee socks WOULD NOT slouch properly. The next year I transferred to a public high school, and by then I had a nice full wardrobe of actual slouch socks.
These were also the girls we asked about French kissing. We picked our moment and asked during a sleepover, when it was dark and it felt like we could be bold. We instinctively felt they would know, and they did, though I don’t remember their explanation solving the mystery of why anyone would WANT to. We asked them if French kissing was the same as angel kissing (heaven knows where we’d found that term), and I don’t remember whether they said it was or whether they said they didn’t know, but either way I still don’t know what angel kissing is, if anything.
As a mom of middle school boys, I cannot for the life of me understand how girls could be interested in middle school boys.
It’s so crazy to look back at middle-school class pictures and see all these tall girls who already look like high schoolers mixed with all these LITTLE BOYS, and to remember having CRUSHES on them.
Exactly – the girls look old enough to drive but the boys are little boys with sus hygiene and poor impulses control.
Ha haaa! I also remember being confused by the term heavy petting in a library book. I went to public school, and we had decent sex ed but I also had puberty books at home to refer to. Neither source explained what heavy petting was supposed to be. Other kids were for sure the richest source of information, good or bad. This was the 90s so we also learned a lot from hearing about Bill Clinton on the news… a friend told me what a blow job was and I DIDN’T BELIEVE HER. Like, no way do people do that.
I don’t know what angel kissing is, but it reminded me that some evangelicals see fit to call deviled eggs, angel eggs. Just to be safe.
I think “heavy petting” refers to “hot and heavy,” as in, touching someone while making out with them. That’s just a guess though. I’d never thought about it until now.
As a tween I believe I thought heavy petting was very similar to how you’d pet a cat or dog – from the top of someone’s head down their back or front. Usually while kissing. It also brings up the term “pawing” as in he was pawing at her. Both of which reference pets/animlas which is now feeling weird.
I grew up in England, and never knew what it meant, when I read it in books (never heard it used by an adult, not a parent, teacher or nun (!))
Even when I was doing it, I didn’t know that the two things were the same!
Euphemism is wasted on kids haha.
I’m English and my only reference for the word ‘petting’ growing up was the rule signs in the swimming pool that said ‘no petting’ (and I think the picture was a young man and a young woman standing next to each other, giving each other the eye). I’m still not quite sure what it is and I’ve been married twenty years and have two children
Yes! I can picture that poster really clearly. This is the only context in which I ever heard the term petting as a brit, until I read it in american books as a teenager. We don’t even use it for animals.
I remember reading the Judy Blume book, “Deenie” when I was in 6th grade or so and she was touching her “special spot” and I thought about what special spot I might have and thought maybe behind my ear. ☺️
Wait, really? I bought this book at the dollar store, never having read it, and started reading it to my kids, but they didn’t like it too much. We had not gotten to that part yet!
I remember that too!! I was so mystified!: why did she have a special spot, and where was it, and why wasn’t she saying more about why it was special??
HEAVY PETTING! I didn’t go to Christian school but I sure remember that term being used. I think of it as dry humping, but heavy petting sounds less…humpy.
Slouch socks! To be worn with everything but especially bubble skirt and pegged jeans.
I blame hormones for everything.
I had very different church sanctioned sex ed (UU). We learned all the slang words for sex and genitalia in addition to the biologically appropriate ones. We also watched slide shows (kodak carousel style) of genitalia to highlight what normal looks like (there is no normal, just average), and people having sex: F:M, F:F, M:M. All the boys walked out during the M:M portion, tbf it was the 80s. We also watched a slide show of our sex ed teacher giving birth. It was very Our Body, Ourselves (OG edition) but with slides!
I was 11 and, looking back, basically asexual at the time. I don’t think the hormones had kicked in yet. It was more embarrassing than anything else.
I remember being VERY confused by the term necking and thinking people rubbed their necks together somehow.
That said I also remember (probably 8th grade-ish) diagramming 69 to an inquisitive group on a friend’s fridge dry erase board and her mom (a very cool nurse with several older children) walked in from outside and commented “well that’s something. does anyone have any other questions?”
I feel very lucky that I had not only very open parental discussions but a pretty robust public school sex education.
I laughed literally out loud. What a great story.
I asked a whole lunch table what 69 was, in high school. Someone had told a joke I had not understood. I did not enjoy the clarification.
Also so confused about necking! I knew it was kissing but I couldn’t stop picturing the party game where you pass an orange down a chain of people holding it between your chin and chest. Two people, in the back of a car, passing an orange with their necks.
Yessss that is just how “necking” looks in my imagination: passing the orange, but no orange!
I remember the same thoughts about necking and couldn’t figure out WHY you would want to do that. Also, how hard did you have to rub to get a hicky 😱
I thought angel kisses were another term for stork bites/those birthmarks babies have on their necks/foreheads. But maybe there’s another meaning
OH!!! YES!!!! I HAVE heard that term in that context!! I’ll bet that’s EXACTLY where we got it, in a way where we missed the context and of course our middle-school brains thought it was a type of kissing!
I thought oral sex meant kissing for YEARS
I love this so much
I remember I was using a blow pen in class in 6th grade and my friend made a joke about practicing for a blow job but I had NO IDEA what he was talking about. Nothing like learning about oral sex from a friend in english class!
My mom grew up with her mom calling french kissing “marital kissing” and she used that term until college when she said it in front of new friends and was instantly mortified.
HEAVY PETTING. Omg, I am weak. I went to Catholic school and in high school our ‘sex ed’ consisted of a teacher coming in and talking about getting married and going to a hotel with mirrors on the ceiling for her honeymoon and first sexual experience.
I was in elementary school during the “suck it!” as an insult era of the 90s. My mom got tired of it and explained it to me and my little brother at the same time, ages 9 and 6. We were mortified (me) and confused (him). There was also about a week in 4th grade where we were all giving ourselves hickeys on our arms. It looked like a contagion had swept through Mr. B’s class. So ridiculous.