Most dads teach their sons about the birds and bees. Our family had Roy. Teaching trickled up, not down, and it involved Roy’s new girlfriend, Twinkle Veldermann.

She wasn’t his girlfriend in a romantic sense, and that’s where the symbiosis came in. Twinkle taught Roy the finer points of playing linebacker and increasing the odds of sacking a quarterback. In return, he shaved her back so the hair wouldn’t mat up under her shoulder pads.

Dad loved Roy but was eternally perplexed by this particular offspring and tried to help him. But how? He drew on his farming background as when the old plow mule started acting funny. Maybe the same medicine that cured the mule would work on Roy.

This stage of Roy’s upbringing began a family routine for us. Mom would relate my older brother’s activity; Dad would eat a roll of Tums, then give Roy another dose of worm medicine.

It was Kismet. Saturated with parasitic protection probably helped Roy stay healthy through his dating years. Some of his later dates you will, no doubt, learn of here.

As for Twinkle, some good, some bad. Getting wormed left Roy half comatose and gave him a light touch to shave around her bruises from being poked with a ten-foot pole by courageous young men, but rendered him useless as a linebacker. She left Roy for a guy that became a stevedore in Antarctica.

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