In high school biology, I ditched class to avoid dissecting a frog. A few years later, when I was a botany graduate student at a prestigious agricultural university, I found myself standing at the head of a freshman biology lab, pretending I knew how to dissect frogs. My students were farm kids. They'd grown up watching their fathers and older brothers slaughter hogs and hunt deer, pheasants, doves... They expected me to demonstrate frog dissection. Instead, I pointed to anatomical diagrams, and waved one trembling hand in the general direction of a mound of green, throbbing, sacrificial amphibians. I handed out sharp instruments, and described the theoretical aspects of a frog's response to a pin inserted in the hypersensitive brain stem. I did not demonstrate. Students were outraged. My major professor heard about it. The Dean, my dissertation committee, the Office of Graduate Student Employment, the Ombudsman, even the University president...

Eventually, I was dropped from the teaching staff, and forced to leave the Aquatic Plant Research Project. My previously state-of-the-art dissertation topic was suddenly judged irrelevant. At the last of several agonizing competency hearings, I made no effort to defend my inaction. Repetition of such an obvious truth seemed futile. How many times can an educated adult explain to a roomful of skeptical academics the true nature of a frog's long, narrow fingers, and wide, friendly smile? How many times could I endure the stares that followed my pronunciation of the simple words, 'frog prince' in a discussion of modern science? I'd reached a point of exhaustion. I couldn't go on describing the way my parents met on the banks of a pond several centuries ago, my mother wearing the humble clothing of an honest woodcutter's daughter, my father dressed in green velvet. He was unusually short, but his fingers were long and narrow, his smile wide and friendly. When they kissed, it was magic...