I recently celebrated my 30th birthday, and am in the initial stages of what I hope will be a serious and long-lasting relationship. My dilemma is this: I’ve never been told the story of “the birds and the bees.” I’ve traveled around the world and am not an inexperienced person, but this missing piece of information may be the reason I haven’t, up till now, been truly successful in love. Please give me the straight dope on the origin of the phrase “the birds and the bees” and the details of the act(s) as it (or they) relate to man. –M. Harris, Washington, D.C.
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Don’t feel bad. Nobody explained it to me, either, and I must say I made quite an impression that first night with the honey and feathers. But now I’m hip. The significance of the birds and bees isn’t what they do, it’s simply that they do it, “it,” naturally, being a tussle in the tumbleweeds, or wherever it is that the lower orders engage in sex. As such it’s the perfect euphemism for a culture so prudish that even publishers of girlie magazines used to airbrush out the pubic hair.
How come the U.S. is practically the only country in the world where household electricity is 110 volts instead of 220 volts? –Mark, Berkeley, California
