Marley and I were running errands recently and since she won’t let me listen to country music while she’s in the car we were listening to the pop station 104.3 My FM when the song Marvin Gaye by Charlie Puth featuring Meghan Trainor came on the radio and I started singing along.

Marley scrunched up her face and said, “What are these lyrics? What does that mean?”

I smiled, glad she was making a face at the song and not at my singing. (Although who knows, it could have been both.)

If you’re unfamiliar with the song the lyrics start out with:

Let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on
You got the healing that I want
Just like they say it in the song
Until the dawn, let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on

“Well,” I said, “Marvin Gaye was a soul singer in the 60’s and 70’s. He had a big hit called Let’s Get It On, that was out in the 70’s I think, and then had kind of a come back with a song called Sexual Healing in the early 80’s.

“So, when they say, Let’s Marvin Gaye and get it on, what they’re saying is, ‘Let’s put on some sexy music and have sex.'”

When you have a 15 year old, you have to kind of tell it like it is.

“I would never want to lose my virginity to a song,” she said. “Because then for the rest of my life whenever I heard that song I would think of that.”

I smiled. “Hopefully when you’re older and you look back on losing your virginity, which I hope is many, many years from now, like in college, you look upon it fondly because you were with someone you loved. And if there was a song that reminded you of it, it would be a happy memory.”

“Well, I still don’t want to do it to a song,” she said.

I love the conversations I have with Marley. Her frankness with me and my ability to be frank with her.

“You know, we’ll have to check with Dad when we get home, but I think it was Marvin Gaye that-”

“Oh God, Mom. No!” she interrupted me.

“What?”

“I don’t want to know what music you and Dad were listening to the first time you had sex. Or ever!”

“Ha! No!” I laughed. “That’s not what I was going to say at all. I was going to say that Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father. At least I’m pretty sure it was Marvin Gaye. That’s what I need to ask Dad.”

“Oh thank God,” she said. “Not that Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father – that’s terrible, but that you weren’t going to tell me about you and Dad.”

“Don’t worry, Marley, I would never tell you about that.” I said I was frank with her, but there are some things that don’t need to be told.

“Thank you Mom.”

“You’re welcome, Marley.”

“You should write about this in your blog,” she said. “It’s pretty funny even though it may have scarred me for life.”

“I think maybe I will,” I told her, so glad that I could finally write a funny story about my teenage daughter with her blessing. “I think maybe I will.”