I have never envied a penis. Not that I remember anyway. I've always been quite happy to be a girl and have all my girly parts intact. And my boys … they do not appear to have castration anxiety. If they did, they would probably spend less time running around the house butt naked while chasing each other with scissors.

I had always dismissed Freud's theories of the Oedipal and Electra complex as outdated psychobabble, academic jargon, or just a lot of hype. Until a recent conversation with my friend Adriane.

When Adriane was fourteen, she spent a lot of time helping take care of her younger siblings. One day, as she was giving her four-year-old sister Emily and her three-year-old brother Nathan a bath, something happened that changed her view of childhood sexuality and Freudian theory. Forever.

You see, everything was all unicorns and cupcakes, the two little munchkins playing happily in the bath together, making silly faces in the bubbles and drinking the bathwater—until all of a sudden Emily ran off to “get something.” When she returned, naked and dripping wet, she was wielding a pair of fourteen-inch sharpened metal barbecue tongs, her arms raised menacingly in the air.

Before Adriane could stammer out the obvious question, “What the heck do you think you're doing with those tongs?” Emily was already whipping them around viciously in concerted attempts to remove Nathan's nether parts.

Lucky for Nathan, Adriane was quick on the draw. After she grabbed the tongs away and shielded Nathan with a small plastic bucket, she cornered Emily against the towel rack and informed her in no uncertain terms that trying to slice Nathan's penis off with barbecue tongs was completely inappropriate bath time behavior. Emily was indignant. She did not seem convinced or penitent in the least.

Later, when the dust had settled a little, Adriane asked Emily, “Why did you want cut off Nathan's penis anyway?”

“Well,” Emily began. “I don't have one. So why should he?”

Fast forward fifteen years or so. Adriane now has her own baby girl named Ayah and several nephews. Her four-year-old nephew Grayson is seriously studying her while she changes her daughter's diaper. He leans over to get a better look. “Auntie Adriane?” he begins.

“Yes, Grayson?”

“When is Ayah's penis going to start growing?”

“Ayah doesn't have a penis, Grayson.”

Grayson is stunned into silence. He looks at Ayah as if she has just grown three heads and antenna. “No … penis?” he repeats, practically choking on the words. “Why not?”

“Because Ayah is a girl. Girls don't have penises.”

Grayson is flabbergasted. This is completely beyond his comprehension. “That is very sad,” he whispers as real tears fill his eyes. “So very sad,” he repeats quietly as if to himself, before he walks away, tentatively patting between his legs as if to make sure his prize is still all there.