Birds, Bees and Frogs

In the early ’60s, an open dialogue between teenagers and parents was about as common as a chitchat between David Duke and Malcolm X.

In our home, this dialogue gap was widened still further. Mom and Dad were sneaky, and if they weren’t comfortable talking about a particular subject, they had a few tricks that they used over and over again to avoid having to explain things to the kids.

The most common tactic was to just not talk about it, and hope that it would go away. Naturally this only worked while we kids were very young. They eventually gave in to our relentless requests and our right to...