One topic I don't hear much about anymore is sex education for young people. Maybe that means the school system has got all the wrinkles ironed out.

But that openness is surprisingly recent, and it's because of its recentness that I found the following episode of John Marquand's 1941 novel, H.M. Pulham, Esquire, very interesting.

Marquand, a very popular writer in his time, (my father owned and read nearly all of his mid- century novels), wrote about a social class that has pretty well disappeared in the last half century, but in his best books and passages he wrote about subjects and plights common to us all.

They could very well have been my own parents.

"Harry," Kay said.

"Yes," I said.

"How perfectly disgusting," Kay said.

"They say now a child is never too young," I told her.

"All right," I said.

Poor Paul and Gladys Pulham, you feel after reading this excerpt. As for me, I don't remember exactly how old I was when my father returned from work in New York City one evening and presented me with a little book.

"I'd like you to read this book, son, and if you have any questions, be sure to ask me."

That was my sex education, until I arrived in junior high school and got pretty much the same lessons, "with pictures and diagrams."

I remember my father had to sign a permission slip for the science teacher, Mr. Frank Dodin, to show us a movie and answer our questions. Only during the movie session at school did I realize some of my classmates knew a whole lot more than I did. Or at least they seemed to.

And that feeling prevented me from asking questions about the functioning of my own body. I guess my chief failure was to not connect the pictures and diagrams in the handbook with the organs of my own body. I must have thought these were pictures and diagrams from which I would be building a machine, much as I used pictures and diagrams to construct balsa wood model planes. I wish my reticent father had taken me aside and explained, in very plain words and phrases, how these "pictures and diagrams" related to the functioning of my own body. But this was, after all, the late 1940's and early 1950's, and constructive talk about sex was all but non-existent.

In fact, I distinctly remember the occasion that provided me with the key I needed. It was late Saturday morning, 1949 or 1950, and about eight or nine of us 9- or 10-year-old kids who lived in Acorn Lane and Normandy Lane were gathered in the Bellamys' sunroom trying to decide what to do with the rest of the day, when, suddenly, Mikey Bellamy (from whom I received a nice letter just the other day) rushed in and said he had something important he needed to tell us all.

Now, I don't remember Mikey whispering anything in my ear specifically, but I do remember vividly that by the time I emerged from the Bellamy house about noon and crossed the backyard to my own back door, I had become privy to an amazing, scarcely believable cluster of facts that would serve me well in the next half century.

In retrospect, I've always wondered who whispered those secrets into Mikey's ear and suggested he pass the information along to the rest of the infantile neighborhood. Mr. or Mrs. Bellamy?

In those days, there was an unstated law, that the father was responsible for telling the son about sex, the mother the daughter. I imagine that law still applies. Jessica is Ginny's and my only child.

Speaking of daughter Jess, we received a postcard yesterday (August 11) from Dubai, on the way to Afghanistan, where she is working for the United Nations, to ensure the smooth working of the country's up-coming elections.

She's done this kind of work before, and is always impressed that in these countries where violence is such a way of life and may well be your only reward for voting, fully 95 percent of the electorate appear at the polling places.

Compare that percent with the percentage of the United States electorate that go to the polls, and you're suddenly ashamed of the 50-plus percent of your fellow-Americans who sit or sleep it out. And maybe, as a result, we get George Bush for President.

Jess was properly impressed by the "cushy UN salary" she was to receive for this "difficult" assignment, but I don't think she realized in advance that a bowl of pasta, for example, would cost $15. Fretful parents should take note of the various safety facets: "We've got bomb blast film on the windows, grates on the doors, and 24-hour security guard on the front door, with an automatic weapon."

She's coming home Dec. 11. I'm counting the hours religiously.