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Let's talk about sex: I swore that when it came time, I would level with my kids about the birds and the bees. Easier said than done.

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Once upon a time my family was traveling home from our summer camping escapades when my little sister, age four, pointed at a farmer's field, chirping merrily from the way back of the station wagon: "Why are those cows riding piggyback?"

The resulting cringe from me and my three brothers, our grandmother, and our father did nothing to dampen our mother's earnest enthusiasm to enlighten. Over the seats my sister came crawling, from way back to front, where our mother whispered feverishly into her ear while the rest of us broiled uncomfortably, trapped in the car, suddenly far too aware of our bodies, our intimate kinship, our grandmother, who'd given birth to our mother, who'd given birth to us, and both of whom must have had sex in order to do so. We tried not to touch, we studied our feet, my father turned up the radio. And still there were those cows, out in their field, some of them blamelessly chewing grass but others having intercourse in full view of the highway. "Oh!" my little sister finally said, frowning, red and infuriated, launched into the same yucky muck as everyone else in the car.

So go many sex education moments. The cringe, the embarrassment, the explanations that don't ever quite cover the entire mystery. "Why?" my fourth-grade class asked our reluctant teacher, when she explained what went where and how it happened and the perils/miracles that would ensue. Our faces said, "Ewww!" Why would anyone want to do such a thing? The science we understood; the mechanics were clear. It was the desire that eluded us. Why, you'd have to be crazy to agree to that stuff! Our dissatisfaction left the teacher tongue-tied, depleted.

"You be the boy," my cousin commanded, when we were...

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