For a couple of years while I was the rogue special ed teacher at Roseau High School, my name brother, Jeff Olson, an outstanding biology instructor, would ask me to stop in during his 7th grade science classes and read the classic, "Walter the Farting Dog."

This was shortly after the turn of the century, and years before the Republicans, evangelicals, and various kooks on the Far Right became the thought police of our American school systems.

Those seventh graders, who had been learning the safe sex habits of centipedes and cockroaches, just roared whenever I mentioned Walter the Farting Dog...