If the monkeys are facing east.....

Parents try to hide their private moments from their kids - which is a good idea, since most kids don't want any knowledge of their parents' intimate encounters - even after they grow up.

A friend told me about the system his parents had to broach the subject. The family owned a set of figurines, and when one parent was feeling frisky, they would communicate it to the other by moving one or more of the figurines into a different position than they usually were. This signaled to the other spouse that intimacy was desired at some point later that day and plans and schedules were modified accordingly.

The problem was that no matter how subtle parents try to be about sex, kids often know when "special events" are in progress (in progress referring to event planning or the act itself). This inevitably led to at least one of the children figuring out the figurine code. You can probably guess what happened. There's really only one way to prove a theory and that's to try to duplicate the results. I wonder how events were handled when they would have been a complete surprise to both participants............?