If one knows that one's family has been shattered - say by the serving of divorce papers from one spouse to the other, which is the better thing to do? Sleepwalk through the old holiday rituals, pretending that things are just as they always were, or refrain, knowing that things will never be that way again?
One other question - why are the presents that I paid for, and no one else paid for, still welcome at the Christmas celebration when I am not welcome there. Does money really mean that much?
And if I paid for the present, and I am not allowed to attend the party, then why does the tag still say it is from "Both of us?"
Am I petty for noticing that while my money apparently means nothing, your money and time are precious and should be appreciated and praised by all?
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sorry to interrupt the high-larious tale but
Dear Readers,
Sorry for the lapse in my tale. I think you will understand in a moment why the story-telling went on hiatus.
Turns out that Mrs. Tripp very much did not like my layoff from IBM. Mrs. Tripp especially did NOT like my boondoggle to Switzerland.
Mrs. Tripp let her feelings be known by, today, having me served with divorce papers. And, I sh*t you not, this very same day I got a formal job offer for a great job at nearly my previous pay.
Yeah. I believe the term "whipsawed" applies here. And only nine more shopping days before Christmas. Wow.
I guess I am fortunate to discover the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Tripp's true feelings before the money starts coming in again. Some things you just can't take back, and I think Divorce papers are one of those things.
Sorry for the lapse in my tale. I think you will understand in a moment why the story-telling went on hiatus.
Turns out that Mrs. Tripp very much did not like my layoff from IBM. Mrs. Tripp especially did NOT like my boondoggle to Switzerland.
Mrs. Tripp let her feelings be known by, today, having me served with divorce papers. And, I sh*t you not, this very same day I got a formal job offer for a great job at nearly my previous pay.
Yeah. I believe the term "whipsawed" applies here. And only nine more shopping days before Christmas. Wow.
I guess I am fortunate to discover the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Tripp's true feelings before the money starts coming in again. Some things you just can't take back, and I think Divorce papers are one of those things.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tripp goes to a backyard barbecue
Anyone joining the party here should go back here and read the story from the start. I really wish the blog tool allowed one to write things from the top down.
As you recall, dear Readers, when last we left Tripp he had recently had his port testicle novocained, and he was anticipating the excitement and fun that would ensue once the female Dr. Gray really got the party started. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
As you recall, dear Readers, when last we left Tripp he had recently had his port testicle novocained, and he was anticipating the excitement and fun that would ensue once the female Dr. Gray really got the party started. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Phantom baseball played with a tennis ball
Anyone joining the party here should go back here and read the story from the start. I really wish the blog tool allowed one to write things from the top down.
As you recall, dear Readers, when last we left Tripp he had recently had his jewels shaved, in icy water, but he was recovering nicely under the warmth of a heat lamp. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
I basked in the warmth of the heat lamp, enjoying my relief and enjoying my satisfaction. I felt the relief that one feels when one has had an ordeal, and when the ordeal is over, and I felt the satisfaction that comes from knowing that one has successfully "bit the bullet," that one has "manned up," and that one has "thought of England" (TY, Debbie!), and one has come out the other side.
While I was basking, Dr. Gray, the female Dr. Gray, came into the room, and she sat down and she began examining my now-warm sctrotum. I thought "Now this is more like it," and I was relaxed, but the thing is that I should not have been relaxed. I should not have been feeling good.
Do you recall, back in the previous chapter, how I was thinking about words like "procedure" and "just" and "feminism" whilst being shaved? Do you know what I *should* have been thinking? Hmmmm? Well I know what I should have been thinking. Yes, yes, hindsight is 50/50, we all know that, but still, I really should have been thinking this: "Why is the bastard Barry shaving my balls?!"
You see, the mind is a tricky thing. The mind sees what the mind wants to see, similar to how the heart loves what the heart loves. And with all of my knowledge, with all of my wisdom, and with all of my years of study, my mind had willfully ignored one unpleasant fact. Every time I had seen the illustrations of a vasectomy in a newspaper article, no doubt planted there by some feminist, I saw the blow-up illustration of the vas deferens being looped and snipped like a piece of string and I assumed, yes, I ASSUMED, that the loop in question was taken from an incision somewhere in the lower abdomen.
I had heard talk about a pulling sensation, and I had assumed that they meant a little tug as the vas deferens was pulled out of an incision somewhere near, well, somewhere near the lower abdomen. My mind had fooled itself, and for all of those years I had been willfully ignorant of the fact that a vasectomy meant that someone would be cutting away at my balls!!
Willful ignorance can be a very useful thing. It allowed us to invade Iraq, for example. It allows us to ignore certain unpleasantries that we wish to ignore. But the problem with willful ignorance is that, at some time, our ignorance may bump into reality, and reality always wins. Bless you, reality. Bless you for giving us a reference point.
But let us snap back to the Procedure room, where the female Dr. Gray was examining my scrotum . . .
As the female Dr. Gray was examining my scrotum, stretching it this way and that, feeling the structures that were hidden inside of it, It occurred to me that the female Dr. Gray had more than a passing interest in what she was stretching. I cleared my throat and asked her what she was looking for. "The best place for the incisions," she replied.
I froze. Willful ignorance or no willful ignorance, my mind realized the awful reality that the female Dr. Gray was going to cut my ball! Actually, scratch that idea, the female Dr. Gray was going to cut BOTH of my balls! That was why the Bastard Barry shaved my balls, and that was why my legs were shackled to the chair!
"Incisions?" I asked, and the female Dr. Gray must have heard the fear in my voice, because she looked up, and then she looked down again, and then she picked up a syringe attached to a needle, and then she said "Oh don't worry. There will be just a couple of cuts, but first I will numb the area with this novocaine."
Now I am a big fan of novocaine. Actually I am a VERY big fan of novocaine, provocaine, benzocaine, and any other members of the large caine family. When I visit the dentist I ask for two shots of novocaine, just to make sure I get full coverage. "No sense feeling any pain," that is what I always say. So I breathed a sigh of relief when the female Dr. Gray placed the needle over injection site number one. I averted my eyes, because I prefer not to see my skin being pierced, and then ZOWEEE, flashback number three.
When I was a tween, I had two great friends named Eugene and Dale. The three of us would play just about every sport together, and we would vary the sport based on the season of the year. Summertime, of course, was baseball time. We would play long games, every day, in the field behind my house.
Those of you familiar with the sport of baseball know that it is normally played with nine players on each team, so trying to play a game of baseball with only three players was a difficult thing to do. Our way around that limitation was our invention of "Phantom" baseball. In Phantom baseball there were two players on defense, the pitcher and the catcher, and there was one player on offense, the batter. We played a variation called "Pitcher's hand out," meaning that when the batter hit the ball he had to run to first base, but if the pitcher got the ball before the batter reached first base it was as if the first baseman had gotten the ball, and the batter would be out.
If the batter made it successfully to first base then there would be a phantom runner on first base, and the batter would go back to bat again, now with a phantom runner on first base. In Phantom baseball every hit was a single, and it was impossible to get a double, triple, or home-run. We would play this game for hours, rotating between pitcher, catcher, and batter, with each of us keeping our own personal scores.
The other local variation we used was that instead of a regular baseball we used a tennis ball. The tennis ball allowed us to pitch from a position closer to the batter, and it also ensured that the batter or catcher would not be hurt if they were hit by either a pitched ball or by a foul ball.
My flashback took me into a game of phantom baseball, on a hot afternoon in August. I was pitching, Eugene was batting, and Dale was catching. In general Eugene was the second best hitter, behind me, but I could usually strike him out by throwing very fast fast balls. This particular time I threw the ball very fast towards Eugene, and I remember that I saw him swing the bat, and I saw nothing else before THWHACK! Eugene had hit a screaming line drive back at me, so fast that I could not get my glove in front of it, and that blazing tennis ball hit me right in the Funniest Home Videos Ten Thousand dollar winning location. THWHACK went the ball, and down went me. I instinctively curled up into a fetal position, and the pain around my groin was incredibly intense, and it picked up intensity the closer it got to my groin, so that at ground zero the pain was so strong it transcended pain, and instead it approached the Wrath of God in its intensity.
The ball rolled around my feet, but it didn't matter, because both Eugene and Dale were laughing so hard that they fell down and they had to hold their stomachs. I was holding a different area.
Back in the procedure room, as the female Dr. Gray pushed the plunger, a tiny part of my mind, a very tiny part of my mind, was able to look from outside myself, and was able to be amazed, and yet not be at all surprised, that a novocaine shot to the nuts felt exactly like a rocketing tennis ball to the nuts. That tiny part of my brain thought "I suppose it does make sense, and yet it is a fact that I would have never ever predicted, even in one thousand years."
Thankfully, unlike the shot with the tennis ball, the shot of novocaine numbed itself fairly quickly, but while I felt relief at the lessening of the pain, I also felt a growing sense of dread, because sure as the sun rises in the morning, I knew that whatever I was feeling over on my port side, I would soon be feeling over on my starboard side. I began to feel nauseous, and I knew that this little procedure was not almost over, this little procedure was just beginning.
With that, dear readers, I must once again bid you adieu, and once again I invite you to tune in tomorrow when I will tell you the chapter of when Tripp goes to a backyard barbecue.
As you recall, dear Readers, when last we left Tripp he had recently had his jewels shaved, in icy water, but he was recovering nicely under the warmth of a heat lamp. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
I basked in the warmth of the heat lamp, enjoying my relief and enjoying my satisfaction. I felt the relief that one feels when one has had an ordeal, and when the ordeal is over, and I felt the satisfaction that comes from knowing that one has successfully "bit the bullet," that one has "manned up," and that one has "thought of England" (TY, Debbie!), and one has come out the other side.
While I was basking, Dr. Gray, the female Dr. Gray, came into the room, and she sat down and she began examining my now-warm sctrotum. I thought "Now this is more like it," and I was relaxed, but the thing is that I should not have been relaxed. I should not have been feeling good.
Do you recall, back in the previous chapter, how I was thinking about words like "procedure" and "just" and "feminism" whilst being shaved? Do you know what I *should* have been thinking? Hmmmm? Well I know what I should have been thinking. Yes, yes, hindsight is 50/50, we all know that, but still, I really should have been thinking this: "Why is the bastard Barry shaving my balls?!"
You see, the mind is a tricky thing. The mind sees what the mind wants to see, similar to how the heart loves what the heart loves. And with all of my knowledge, with all of my wisdom, and with all of my years of study, my mind had willfully ignored one unpleasant fact. Every time I had seen the illustrations of a vasectomy in a newspaper article, no doubt planted there by some feminist, I saw the blow-up illustration of the vas deferens being looped and snipped like a piece of string and I assumed, yes, I ASSUMED, that the loop in question was taken from an incision somewhere in the lower abdomen.
I had heard talk about a pulling sensation, and I had assumed that they meant a little tug as the vas deferens was pulled out of an incision somewhere near, well, somewhere near the lower abdomen. My mind had fooled itself, and for all of those years I had been willfully ignorant of the fact that a vasectomy meant that someone would be cutting away at my balls!!
Willful ignorance can be a very useful thing. It allowed us to invade Iraq, for example. It allows us to ignore certain unpleasantries that we wish to ignore. But the problem with willful ignorance is that, at some time, our ignorance may bump into reality, and reality always wins. Bless you, reality. Bless you for giving us a reference point.
But let us snap back to the Procedure room, where the female Dr. Gray was examining my scrotum . . .
As the female Dr. Gray was examining my scrotum, stretching it this way and that, feeling the structures that were hidden inside of it, It occurred to me that the female Dr. Gray had more than a passing interest in what she was stretching. I cleared my throat and asked her what she was looking for. "The best place for the incisions," she replied.
I froze. Willful ignorance or no willful ignorance, my mind realized the awful reality that the female Dr. Gray was going to cut my ball! Actually, scratch that idea, the female Dr. Gray was going to cut BOTH of my balls! That was why the Bastard Barry shaved my balls, and that was why my legs were shackled to the chair!
"Incisions?" I asked, and the female Dr. Gray must have heard the fear in my voice, because she looked up, and then she looked down again, and then she picked up a syringe attached to a needle, and then she said "Oh don't worry. There will be just a couple of cuts, but first I will numb the area with this novocaine."
Now I am a big fan of novocaine. Actually I am a VERY big fan of novocaine, provocaine, benzocaine, and any other members of the large caine family. When I visit the dentist I ask for two shots of novocaine, just to make sure I get full coverage. "No sense feeling any pain," that is what I always say. So I breathed a sigh of relief when the female Dr. Gray placed the needle over injection site number one. I averted my eyes, because I prefer not to see my skin being pierced, and then ZOWEEE, flashback number three.
When I was a tween, I had two great friends named Eugene and Dale. The three of us would play just about every sport together, and we would vary the sport based on the season of the year. Summertime, of course, was baseball time. We would play long games, every day, in the field behind my house.
Those of you familiar with the sport of baseball know that it is normally played with nine players on each team, so trying to play a game of baseball with only three players was a difficult thing to do. Our way around that limitation was our invention of "Phantom" baseball. In Phantom baseball there were two players on defense, the pitcher and the catcher, and there was one player on offense, the batter. We played a variation called "Pitcher's hand out," meaning that when the batter hit the ball he had to run to first base, but if the pitcher got the ball before the batter reached first base it was as if the first baseman had gotten the ball, and the batter would be out.
If the batter made it successfully to first base then there would be a phantom runner on first base, and the batter would go back to bat again, now with a phantom runner on first base. In Phantom baseball every hit was a single, and it was impossible to get a double, triple, or home-run. We would play this game for hours, rotating between pitcher, catcher, and batter, with each of us keeping our own personal scores.
The other local variation we used was that instead of a regular baseball we used a tennis ball. The tennis ball allowed us to pitch from a position closer to the batter, and it also ensured that the batter or catcher would not be hurt if they were hit by either a pitched ball or by a foul ball.
My flashback took me into a game of phantom baseball, on a hot afternoon in August. I was pitching, Eugene was batting, and Dale was catching. In general Eugene was the second best hitter, behind me, but I could usually strike him out by throwing very fast fast balls. This particular time I threw the ball very fast towards Eugene, and I remember that I saw him swing the bat, and I saw nothing else before THWHACK! Eugene had hit a screaming line drive back at me, so fast that I could not get my glove in front of it, and that blazing tennis ball hit me right in the Funniest Home Videos Ten Thousand dollar winning location. THWHACK went the ball, and down went me. I instinctively curled up into a fetal position, and the pain around my groin was incredibly intense, and it picked up intensity the closer it got to my groin, so that at ground zero the pain was so strong it transcended pain, and instead it approached the Wrath of God in its intensity.
The ball rolled around my feet, but it didn't matter, because both Eugene and Dale were laughing so hard that they fell down and they had to hold their stomachs. I was holding a different area.
Back in the procedure room, as the female Dr. Gray pushed the plunger, a tiny part of my mind, a very tiny part of my mind, was able to look from outside myself, and was able to be amazed, and yet not be at all surprised, that a novocaine shot to the nuts felt exactly like a rocketing tennis ball to the nuts. That tiny part of my brain thought "I suppose it does make sense, and yet it is a fact that I would have never ever predicted, even in one thousand years."
Thankfully, unlike the shot with the tennis ball, the shot of novocaine numbed itself fairly quickly, but while I felt relief at the lessening of the pain, I also felt a growing sense of dread, because sure as the sun rises in the morning, I knew that whatever I was feeling over on my port side, I would soon be feeling over on my starboard side. I began to feel nauseous, and I knew that this little procedure was not almost over, this little procedure was just beginning.
With that, dear readers, I must once again bid you adieu, and once again I invite you to tune in tomorrow when I will tell you the chapter of when Tripp goes to a backyard barbecue.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Long Lake, Wisconsin
Anyone joining the party here should go back here and read the story from the start. I really wish the blog tool allowed one to write things from the top down.
As you recall, dear readers, when last we left Tripp he was feeling trepidation, knowing that his future would follow one of two paths - he could face pain, humiliation, male fondling, and female hacking, or he could turn tail and he could run like a coward. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
As you can tell from my selection of words, I really had no choice. No choice at all. I dropped trou, dropped my drawers, and dropped my big butt down onto the medium-sized Pampers. I was thinking, among other things, "A medium Pampers? Really? At the world famous Mayo Clinic? I don't believe it!" I mean I didn't really expect, say, soft linens, or a chair cushioned with velvet, but couldn't the world famous Mayo Clinic have used a flat pad of some kind, or couldn't they have even used an adult-sized "Depends" sanitary garment?! Had the Clinic succumbed to some ill-advised suggestion from an employee so that the Mayo Clinic could save a few pennies by using baby products as a replacement for adult pads?! Was this the beginning of socialized medicine, weak coffee, and sugar rationing?!
As I was thinking this the male Nurse, whom I will now refer to as "Barry," because I have always disliked the name Barry, starting at my Senior Prom, and for a very good reason, which is a story for another post, the male nurse Barry was shackling my legs to the chair with the leather straps. "For your own safety and comfort," he told me. "Yeah, sure," I thought.
Then Barry told me how he needed to shave me before the procedure, and he told me he needed me to wait a minute, and he told me he needed to get the soap and water, and I thought "Wow, you are very needy," because I was starting to dislike him, but while that is what I thought, what I said was "I already shaved this morning, heh heh," which was a halfhearted attempt at banter, which he didn't hear, because he had already left the room. Sigh. I struggled, just a bit, to see how tight the leg restraints were, and they were plenty tight. Barry soon returned to the room with a bowl of water, a washcloth, some soap, and a razor.
Barry dipped the washcloth into the water and he applied the water to my most favorite paired body parts and ZOWEE - flashback number two - Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June.
At one point in my young adult life my parents had bought a boat, a very nice boat, a very nice boat with an inboard/outboard motor powerful enough to pull a water skier and which could go 35 mph, which is a very fast speed for a boat to go. That particular summer, the summer of my flashback, I had joined my parents, along with my younger brother and his friend, at Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June, for a much needed vacation. My parents allowed me and my younger brother and his friend to take the boat out for water skiing, and we had a blast. We had a BLAST.
There is one important thing that you need to know. The weather in June was pleasantly warm, perhaps 80 degrees, but the lake was in Northern Wisconsin, so the lake water was cold. In the shallows the water was tolerable, but in the deep part of the lake the water was cold, and I mean COLD!
So I was water-skiing for something like the fifth time that day, having a grand old time, when my brother decided it would be fun to try to make me fall. He started whipping the boat into tight turns, sending me flying around the corners, then swamping me, then sending me whipping around the other side. This was all great fun. GREAT fun. Until I fell. Wham!
Two things of note happened when I fell. The first thing that happened was merely a minor nuisance - the flotation belt that I had been wearing around my waist was forced up my chest and underneath my arms. I have always had a chest which is larger than my waist, which is very good in a manly way, but which is also very bad when a waist-sized belt is forced up one's body and around one's chest.
All in all, though, that was the least of my problems. My breathing was slightly constricted, as you might expect, but my biggest problem, which I sensed immediately, was that my family jewels, my testicles, my prized possessions, my source of all my future children, were retreating, fast, retreating to a place I never knew I had!
All you medical students already know that, during development in the womb, the male testicles descend from the abdomen into the scrotum, and the scrotum is a temperature control device, caring for the testicles like a mother Kangaroo cares for her Joey in her pouch. Well, without the nursing, of course. And the mother Kangaroos are female and not male. And, aw, forget it, bad analogy.
The thing was that when the freezing water hit my jewels those cojones retreated, instantly, ascending the path which they had previously descended so many years before, and they were literally knocking on my abdominal wall, battering it in a futile attempt to crawl back up through it in order to cuddle up next to my small intestines, seeking any warmth they could find.
That kind of feeling, that deep, strong clacking of innards, that futile attempt at an internal homecoming, that wrecking ball slamming into a steel wall feeling, that kind of feeling stays with a fella, like a flaw in a diamond, and that feeling is carried everywhere, and that feeling is usually forgotten, but every now and then, when the universe turns just right - ah, yup, there is that feeling again!
Yup. Back in the Procedure room at the Mayo Clinic, when Barry bathed my balls with icy water, I remembered that feeling. I FELT that feeling. My eggs turned to plums which turned to cherries which turned to pits. Barry explained that it was easier to shave the skin when it was 'firm.' "Ah," I thought, "Well, then, by all means, make things easy for yourself. Firm those puppies up like leeches in icy water. Poach those eggs. Get that fudge to the soft ball stage. We wouldn't want the shaving to be difficult for you now would we? Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, that is what *I* always say. Bastard. Bastard Barry!"
So I sat, legs clamped down, jaw clamped shut, teeth clenched together, balls the size of cherry pits, and I watched a man shave my cold scrotum with a safety razor. And I thought about things. I thought about words, such as 'procedure' and 'just.' Yeah, I thought about words like that. And feminists.
And when Barry was finished, and when Barry was satisfied with his work, he dried me off with a towel, and he brought over a blessed heat lamp, to warm things up, and he said that the Doctor would be in shortly, and then he left.
As I sat under the heat lamp, warmth returning to my masculinity, I slowly unclenched, and I became more comfortable, and I relaxed, and I thought "Really, Tripp, that wasn't so bad was it? I hear the 'shaved' look is in now. Chicks dig smooth skin. Why, you are nearly European now." I wasn't really sure what "European" meant, in the scrotum sense, but I knew that I was now somehow exotic, and perhaps, somehow, chicks would dig my new exoticness, although I was not yet sure how I could work that feature into a conversation.
And as I relaxed, so did my scrotum, and the world became proper again, a place for everything, and everything in its place. Ahhh. Yeah. The procedure was almost over.
Thus ends this chapter of "How Tripp Manned up and met Mr. Sparky." Tune in tomorrow when we get to flashback to "Phantom baseball played with a tennis ball."
As you recall, dear readers, when last we left Tripp he was feeling trepidation, knowing that his future would follow one of two paths - he could face pain, humiliation, male fondling, and female hacking, or he could turn tail and he could run like a coward. Let us resume the story at that point . . .
As you can tell from my selection of words, I really had no choice. No choice at all. I dropped trou, dropped my drawers, and dropped my big butt down onto the medium-sized Pampers. I was thinking, among other things, "A medium Pampers? Really? At the world famous Mayo Clinic? I don't believe it!" I mean I didn't really expect, say, soft linens, or a chair cushioned with velvet, but couldn't the world famous Mayo Clinic have used a flat pad of some kind, or couldn't they have even used an adult-sized "Depends" sanitary garment?! Had the Clinic succumbed to some ill-advised suggestion from an employee so that the Mayo Clinic could save a few pennies by using baby products as a replacement for adult pads?! Was this the beginning of socialized medicine, weak coffee, and sugar rationing?!
As I was thinking this the male Nurse, whom I will now refer to as "Barry," because I have always disliked the name Barry, starting at my Senior Prom, and for a very good reason, which is a story for another post, the male nurse Barry was shackling my legs to the chair with the leather straps. "For your own safety and comfort," he told me. "Yeah, sure," I thought.
Then Barry told me how he needed to shave me before the procedure, and he told me he needed me to wait a minute, and he told me he needed to get the soap and water, and I thought "Wow, you are very needy," because I was starting to dislike him, but while that is what I thought, what I said was "I already shaved this morning, heh heh," which was a halfhearted attempt at banter, which he didn't hear, because he had already left the room. Sigh. I struggled, just a bit, to see how tight the leg restraints were, and they were plenty tight. Barry soon returned to the room with a bowl of water, a washcloth, some soap, and a razor.
Barry dipped the washcloth into the water and he applied the water to my most favorite paired body parts and ZOWEE - flashback number two - Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June.
At one point in my young adult life my parents had bought a boat, a very nice boat, a very nice boat with an inboard/outboard motor powerful enough to pull a water skier and which could go 35 mph, which is a very fast speed for a boat to go. That particular summer, the summer of my flashback, I had joined my parents, along with my younger brother and his friend, at Long Lake, Wisconsin, in June, for a much needed vacation. My parents allowed me and my younger brother and his friend to take the boat out for water skiing, and we had a blast. We had a BLAST.
There is one important thing that you need to know. The weather in June was pleasantly warm, perhaps 80 degrees, but the lake was in Northern Wisconsin, so the lake water was cold. In the shallows the water was tolerable, but in the deep part of the lake the water was cold, and I mean COLD!
So I was water-skiing for something like the fifth time that day, having a grand old time, when my brother decided it would be fun to try to make me fall. He started whipping the boat into tight turns, sending me flying around the corners, then swamping me, then sending me whipping around the other side. This was all great fun. GREAT fun. Until I fell. Wham!
Two things of note happened when I fell. The first thing that happened was merely a minor nuisance - the flotation belt that I had been wearing around my waist was forced up my chest and underneath my arms. I have always had a chest which is larger than my waist, which is very good in a manly way, but which is also very bad when a waist-sized belt is forced up one's body and around one's chest.
All in all, though, that was the least of my problems. My breathing was slightly constricted, as you might expect, but my biggest problem, which I sensed immediately, was that my family jewels, my testicles, my prized possessions, my source of all my future children, were retreating, fast, retreating to a place I never knew I had!
All you medical students already know that, during development in the womb, the male testicles descend from the abdomen into the scrotum, and the scrotum is a temperature control device, caring for the testicles like a mother Kangaroo cares for her Joey in her pouch. Well, without the nursing, of course. And the mother Kangaroos are female and not male. And, aw, forget it, bad analogy.
The thing was that when the freezing water hit my jewels those cojones retreated, instantly, ascending the path which they had previously descended so many years before, and they were literally knocking on my abdominal wall, battering it in a futile attempt to crawl back up through it in order to cuddle up next to my small intestines, seeking any warmth they could find.
That kind of feeling, that deep, strong clacking of innards, that futile attempt at an internal homecoming, that wrecking ball slamming into a steel wall feeling, that kind of feeling stays with a fella, like a flaw in a diamond, and that feeling is carried everywhere, and that feeling is usually forgotten, but every now and then, when the universe turns just right - ah, yup, there is that feeling again!
Yup. Back in the Procedure room at the Mayo Clinic, when Barry bathed my balls with icy water, I remembered that feeling. I FELT that feeling. My eggs turned to plums which turned to cherries which turned to pits. Barry explained that it was easier to shave the skin when it was 'firm.' "Ah," I thought, "Well, then, by all means, make things easy for yourself. Firm those puppies up like leeches in icy water. Poach those eggs. Get that fudge to the soft ball stage. We wouldn't want the shaving to be difficult for you now would we? Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, that is what *I* always say. Bastard. Bastard Barry!"
So I sat, legs clamped down, jaw clamped shut, teeth clenched together, balls the size of cherry pits, and I watched a man shave my cold scrotum with a safety razor. And I thought about things. I thought about words, such as 'procedure' and 'just.' Yeah, I thought about words like that. And feminists.
And when Barry was finished, and when Barry was satisfied with his work, he dried me off with a towel, and he brought over a blessed heat lamp, to warm things up, and he said that the Doctor would be in shortly, and then he left.
As I sat under the heat lamp, warmth returning to my masculinity, I slowly unclenched, and I became more comfortable, and I relaxed, and I thought "Really, Tripp, that wasn't so bad was it? I hear the 'shaved' look is in now. Chicks dig smooth skin. Why, you are nearly European now." I wasn't really sure what "European" meant, in the scrotum sense, but I knew that I was now somehow exotic, and perhaps, somehow, chicks would dig my new exoticness, although I was not yet sure how I could work that feature into a conversation.
And as I relaxed, so did my scrotum, and the world became proper again, a place for everything, and everything in its place. Ahhh. Yeah. The procedure was almost over.
Thus ends this chapter of "How Tripp Manned up and met Mr. Sparky." Tune in tomorrow when we get to flashback to "Phantom baseball played with a tennis ball."
Monday, December 7, 2009
Into the "Procedure room."
Anyone joining the party here should go back here and read the story from the start. I really wish the blog tool allowed one to write things from the top down.
As you recall, dear readers, when last we left the stalwart young feminist Tripp he was walking bravely into the "Procedure room," the room where the minor procedure, not much more than removing a splinter, really, was going to be performed. Let us resume the story there . . .
I walked calmly into the procedure room, shoulders back, chest out, with, I would like to think, a certain elegant ease which showed that not only did I have no fear, but which also showed that I was a man of the world, I was on top of my game, and certainly nothing as minor as just a vasectomy would knock me off of my pedestal.
I entered the "Procedure room" and Dr. Gray, the female Dr. Gray, left the room, presumably to wash up. I noticed that she had left and I thought, "Well, the whole point of the procedure, after all, is sterility. Ha Ha." I made myself laugh with my private little joke. Then I laughed a little more, to myself, and I impressed myself with how cool I was under the circumstances. "Tripp," I thought, "you are impressively cool under these circumstances."
A young man then walked in, and I presumed he was perhaps the towel boy, bringing linens, or perhaps a busboy of some kind, ready to clean away any clutter. I ignored him as he went to a cabinet and removed some cloths. I ignored him as he turned around, and I ignored him as he put a Pampers disposable diaper onto a chair. I did not ignore him when he instructed me to remove my pants, remove my underpants, and sit down on the chair. He instructed me to sit down on the chair with the Pampers curled halfheartedly on it like a mostly-dead fishing worm. He instructed me to sit down on the chair which I saw, when I looked at it closer, had leg restraints!? WTF?!
I realized, at that moment, that this young man was the Nurse, and I realized that it would be him who would be preparing me for the surgery. Yes, dear readers, you are understanding me correctly. You get the picture. I got the picture. A MAN would be pseudo-fondling my, um, wedding tackle, and a WOMAN would be hacking away at my vas deferens, my sacred manhood. Um, I mean she would be performing the little snip snip.
That was the first moment when it occurred to me that this minor event in my life, this teeny tiny little 'procedure thing' may not go exactly as I had planned. That was the moment when I knew, as much as any man knows any thing, that I had a choice - I had a very distinct choice. I could "Man up" and get fondled by a man and hacked by a woman, or I could bolt from the room and never come back, and face a lifetime of condoms and a lifetime of condemnations and a lifetime of pointed reminders about the time when Tripp ran like the wind.
Once again, I must leave you, dear readers. I am called elsewhere. But tune in tomorrow for the next chapter in the story of "How Tripp Manned up and met Mr. Sparky."
As you recall, dear readers, when last we left the stalwart young feminist Tripp he was walking bravely into the "Procedure room," the room where the minor procedure, not much more than removing a splinter, really, was going to be performed. Let us resume the story there . . .
I walked calmly into the procedure room, shoulders back, chest out, with, I would like to think, a certain elegant ease which showed that not only did I have no fear, but which also showed that I was a man of the world, I was on top of my game, and certainly nothing as minor as just a vasectomy would knock me off of my pedestal.
I entered the "Procedure room" and Dr. Gray, the female Dr. Gray, left the room, presumably to wash up. I noticed that she had left and I thought, "Well, the whole point of the procedure, after all, is sterility. Ha Ha." I made myself laugh with my private little joke. Then I laughed a little more, to myself, and I impressed myself with how cool I was under the circumstances. "Tripp," I thought, "you are impressively cool under these circumstances."
A young man then walked in, and I presumed he was perhaps the towel boy, bringing linens, or perhaps a busboy of some kind, ready to clean away any clutter. I ignored him as he went to a cabinet and removed some cloths. I ignored him as he turned around, and I ignored him as he put a Pampers disposable diaper onto a chair. I did not ignore him when he instructed me to remove my pants, remove my underpants, and sit down on the chair. He instructed me to sit down on the chair with the Pampers curled halfheartedly on it like a mostly-dead fishing worm. He instructed me to sit down on the chair which I saw, when I looked at it closer, had leg restraints!? WTF?!
I realized, at that moment, that this young man was the Nurse, and I realized that it would be him who would be preparing me for the surgery. Yes, dear readers, you are understanding me correctly. You get the picture. I got the picture. A MAN would be pseudo-fondling my, um, wedding tackle, and a WOMAN would be hacking away at my vas deferens, my sacred manhood. Um, I mean she would be performing the little snip snip.
That was the first moment when it occurred to me that this minor event in my life, this teeny tiny little 'procedure thing' may not go exactly as I had planned. That was the moment when I knew, as much as any man knows any thing, that I had a choice - I had a very distinct choice. I could "Man up" and get fondled by a man and hacked by a woman, or I could bolt from the room and never come back, and face a lifetime of condoms and a lifetime of condemnations and a lifetime of pointed reminders about the time when Tripp ran like the wind.
Once again, I must leave you, dear readers. I am called elsewhere. But tune in tomorrow for the next chapter in the story of "How Tripp Manned up and met Mr. Sparky."
My Date with Sparky
My Date with Sparky
Alright, Dear Readers, I get the message, stop with the emails. Too much hard science and misty angst makes Tripp a dull blogger. Okay, today I am in the mood for some humor, and I am in the mood for some fun.
Gather round, boys and girls. Please come in close. Closer. Leave room for the little ones. Everyone comfy? Good.
I would like to tell you the story of the day when Tripp “Manned up and met Mr. Sparky.”
Now before we start with the story, I want to make sure that we all understand the details and the background and the context for this story. Sally, please explain to Timmy what context means, but do it quietly. Thank you.
As we all know, the purpose of life is to create more life. And as we also all know, God has made us so that we are nudged, or even compelled, to serve our purpose, and because our God is a good God, our God uses positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement to compel us. Let us thank our God for this. “Thanks God! Thank you for making us horny!!”
Now in addition to giving us the compulsion to make more life, God also gives us a brain to realize that there must be balance in everything. Some people call this balance "harmony," some call it the "yin and the yang," and, yes, Little Timmy? Do you know what we call it? . . . That’s right, Little Timmy, we do call it common sense. You are a smart boy.
So after Tripp lived long enough to reproduce, meaning he lived long enough to create life, much life, nearly too much life, Tripp’s brain told him that he had also created a debt load, a very large and a very heavy debt load that would take years to pay off. Since Tripp was no dummy, having, after all, survived long enough to reproduce, he decided that his baby-making days were over. Mrs. Tripp agreed with this, and she agreed with it so much that they discussed all the possible options, meaning Mrs. Tripp said “Just get a vasectomy.”
I am pretty sure that somewhere in the feminist handbook, after the entry stating that “All men must now be in the delivery room during their wife’s labor to view, first hand, the holy hell they have put their wives through,” there is another entry that states “In matters of castration it is the MAN who MUST undergo the, as I used to call it, “snip snip,” and if your man balks at this remind him of the holy hell of labor that you experienced, and remind him that unlike tubal ligation, which is a MAJOR surgery, and which may lead to major legal litigation, a vasectomy is just minor surgery, so trivial that it is often done as an outpatient procedure.
Did you see that? Tubal ligation is MAJOR surgery, but a vasectomy is just a minor procedure, nothing more, really, than getting one’s hair cut. A snip here, a snip there, and off one goes, to the Opera, or places like that.
Since I am a feminist, I totally agreed with this. Well, I also agreed because Mrs. Tripp refused to go back on the pill, and it was either the snip snip or condoms, and I dislike condoms. They are too tight. And too short. Heh heh.
So I made the appointment at the most excellent (and conveniently located) Mayo Clinic, second in the nation only to John’s Hopkins. Curse you John’s Hopkins!
At my appointment the first thing I found out is this: The Mayo Clinic would be very happy to perform the snip snip, but not while one’s spouse is still pregnant. I suppose this makes sense, because what if there are problems with the baby? Would one change his mind? Also, since one has already knocked up one’s wife, one did not NEED birth control at that time, unless one was catting around, and would one like one’s spouse to know that??
This was very sensible, and I was *not* catting around, so I waited, and there was only one problem with that. When I do something like this I like to DO it and get it over with. Anticipation is a killer for me. In class, if we needed to give a speech, I always volunteered to go first, to get it over with. Unfortunately, there was no volunteering early for the snip snip, and I had to wait until my fourth child was delivered.
Finally, though, the day came. Our newborn was safely out into the world, and it was time to plug the dam.
I went into the office, the urology office, and they asked me if I had any preferences of Doctor? I did not. I knew none of them, and I figured they were all good, so I said “the first one that can do it would be fine.” I was scheduled to see Dr Gray at 1 PM.
I left, and when I returned at 1 PM I was sent to a room next to the, um, procedure room. I waited a few minutes, and in walked Dr. Gray. A female Dr Gray. It was flashback time, dear readers. I warn you that, while this is the first flashback, there will be more coming during the telling of this tale. If you are prone to motion sickness I suggest you put on your Dramamine patch now, so it will be in effect later, when you need it.
The flashback was to my college days. Specifically, to a February 14th, Valentine’s day, when I had friends visiting, and when none of us had dates. The bars were full of couples, moony-eyed couples, and no self-respecting female would come into the bar on Valentine’s day without a date, so my pals and I were lonely. Very lonely. We yearned for the soothing touch of a young lass, or, at least, for the companionship of a girl.
Somehow our conversation turned to a local establishment called “The Velvet Touch Massage Parlor.” Oh, yeah, now you can see where this is going. Somehow, the deal was that my two pals would pay the bill and I would get the, ahem, service, and then I would report back to them everything that happened, complete with all the details. Even back then I was known as a pretty good story teller, and if the story wasn’t just right, I could always fake it to make it great.
I recall that, at the “Velvet Touch,” I was instructed to take a shower, in a very dark room, and “Monica” would be right in after I was done. I recall that the soap in the shower was Ivory soap, “99.44% pure.” I could smell the soap, and when I recalled the slogan I thought “99.44% pure? Not after tonight.”
So when I met Dr. Gray, the female urologist at the Mayo Clinic, (did you see how quickly I zoomed back to the present time, from the flashback? I warn you, fasten your seat belts, and keep your head pressed firmly back into the headrest, because the way I am whipping around my timeline you might get whiplash!) I flashed back to the moment, at the “Velvet Touch massage Parlor,” when I was showered and soaped and 99.44% pure, and when I waited to meet “Monica,” the first woman who would ever intimately examine my, um, wedding tackle. All the insecurities that I felt back then, at the “Velvet Touch,” came tumbling back to me at the Mayo Clinic. “What if I get hard? What if I don’t? What if I like it? What if I don’t? What if the Vikings *never* win the Superbowl?”
I listened to Dr. Gray cautioning me that a vasectomy is NOT reversible, but if I did want it reversed, they could do it. She mentioned it was just a minor procedure, and it almost NEVER failed, but it might. I listened and I became a little more at ease. I was older than I had been at the "Velvet Touch." I had experience. I was practically a man of the world. Given a choice, let’s face it, I would much rather have a woman messing with my, um, tackle than have a man messing with it. This was going to be all right. Yeah. I was cool. I was ready. I was, like, "Let’s do this puppy!"
This post is plenty long, so I will post it now, and continue the story later.
Coming up next – Into the “Procedure room.”
Alright, Dear Readers, I get the message, stop with the emails. Too much hard science and misty angst makes Tripp a dull blogger. Okay, today I am in the mood for some humor, and I am in the mood for some fun.
Gather round, boys and girls. Please come in close. Closer. Leave room for the little ones. Everyone comfy? Good.
I would like to tell you the story of the day when Tripp “Manned up and met Mr. Sparky.”
Now before we start with the story, I want to make sure that we all understand the details and the background and the context for this story. Sally, please explain to Timmy what context means, but do it quietly. Thank you.
As we all know, the purpose of life is to create more life. And as we also all know, God has made us so that we are nudged, or even compelled, to serve our purpose, and because our God is a good God, our God uses positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement to compel us. Let us thank our God for this. “Thanks God! Thank you for making us horny!!”
Now in addition to giving us the compulsion to make more life, God also gives us a brain to realize that there must be balance in everything. Some people call this balance "harmony," some call it the "yin and the yang," and, yes, Little Timmy? Do you know what we call it? . . . That’s right, Little Timmy, we do call it common sense. You are a smart boy.
So after Tripp lived long enough to reproduce, meaning he lived long enough to create life, much life, nearly too much life, Tripp’s brain told him that he had also created a debt load, a very large and a very heavy debt load that would take years to pay off. Since Tripp was no dummy, having, after all, survived long enough to reproduce, he decided that his baby-making days were over. Mrs. Tripp agreed with this, and she agreed with it so much that they discussed all the possible options, meaning Mrs. Tripp said “Just get a vasectomy.”
I am pretty sure that somewhere in the feminist handbook, after the entry stating that “All men must now be in the delivery room during their wife’s labor to view, first hand, the holy hell they have put their wives through,” there is another entry that states “In matters of castration it is the MAN who MUST undergo the, as I used to call it, “snip snip,” and if your man balks at this remind him of the holy hell of labor that you experienced, and remind him that unlike tubal ligation, which is a MAJOR surgery, and which may lead to major legal litigation, a vasectomy is just minor surgery, so trivial that it is often done as an outpatient procedure.
Did you see that? Tubal ligation is MAJOR surgery, but a vasectomy is just a minor procedure, nothing more, really, than getting one’s hair cut. A snip here, a snip there, and off one goes, to the Opera, or places like that.
Since I am a feminist, I totally agreed with this. Well, I also agreed because Mrs. Tripp refused to go back on the pill, and it was either the snip snip or condoms, and I dislike condoms. They are too tight. And too short. Heh heh.
So I made the appointment at the most excellent (and conveniently located) Mayo Clinic, second in the nation only to John’s Hopkins. Curse you John’s Hopkins!
At my appointment the first thing I found out is this: The Mayo Clinic would be very happy to perform the snip snip, but not while one’s spouse is still pregnant. I suppose this makes sense, because what if there are problems with the baby? Would one change his mind? Also, since one has already knocked up one’s wife, one did not NEED birth control at that time, unless one was catting around, and would one like one’s spouse to know that??
This was very sensible, and I was *not* catting around, so I waited, and there was only one problem with that. When I do something like this I like to DO it and get it over with. Anticipation is a killer for me. In class, if we needed to give a speech, I always volunteered to go first, to get it over with. Unfortunately, there was no volunteering early for the snip snip, and I had to wait until my fourth child was delivered.
Finally, though, the day came. Our newborn was safely out into the world, and it was time to plug the dam.
I went into the office, the urology office, and they asked me if I had any preferences of Doctor? I did not. I knew none of them, and I figured they were all good, so I said “the first one that can do it would be fine.” I was scheduled to see Dr Gray at 1 PM.
I left, and when I returned at 1 PM I was sent to a room next to the, um, procedure room. I waited a few minutes, and in walked Dr. Gray. A female Dr Gray. It was flashback time, dear readers. I warn you that, while this is the first flashback, there will be more coming during the telling of this tale. If you are prone to motion sickness I suggest you put on your Dramamine patch now, so it will be in effect later, when you need it.
The flashback was to my college days. Specifically, to a February 14th, Valentine’s day, when I had friends visiting, and when none of us had dates. The bars were full of couples, moony-eyed couples, and no self-respecting female would come into the bar on Valentine’s day without a date, so my pals and I were lonely. Very lonely. We yearned for the soothing touch of a young lass, or, at least, for the companionship of a girl.
Somehow our conversation turned to a local establishment called “The Velvet Touch Massage Parlor.” Oh, yeah, now you can see where this is going. Somehow, the deal was that my two pals would pay the bill and I would get the, ahem, service, and then I would report back to them everything that happened, complete with all the details. Even back then I was known as a pretty good story teller, and if the story wasn’t just right, I could always fake it to make it great.
I recall that, at the “Velvet Touch,” I was instructed to take a shower, in a very dark room, and “Monica” would be right in after I was done. I recall that the soap in the shower was Ivory soap, “99.44% pure.” I could smell the soap, and when I recalled the slogan I thought “99.44% pure? Not after tonight.”
So when I met Dr. Gray, the female urologist at the Mayo Clinic, (did you see how quickly I zoomed back to the present time, from the flashback? I warn you, fasten your seat belts, and keep your head pressed firmly back into the headrest, because the way I am whipping around my timeline you might get whiplash!) I flashed back to the moment, at the “Velvet Touch massage Parlor,” when I was showered and soaped and 99.44% pure, and when I waited to meet “Monica,” the first woman who would ever intimately examine my, um, wedding tackle. All the insecurities that I felt back then, at the “Velvet Touch,” came tumbling back to me at the Mayo Clinic. “What if I get hard? What if I don’t? What if I like it? What if I don’t? What if the Vikings *never* win the Superbowl?”
I listened to Dr. Gray cautioning me that a vasectomy is NOT reversible, but if I did want it reversed, they could do it. She mentioned it was just a minor procedure, and it almost NEVER failed, but it might. I listened and I became a little more at ease. I was older than I had been at the "Velvet Touch." I had experience. I was practically a man of the world. Given a choice, let’s face it, I would much rather have a woman messing with my, um, tackle than have a man messing with it. This was going to be all right. Yeah. I was cool. I was ready. I was, like, "Let’s do this puppy!"
This post is plenty long, so I will post it now, and continue the story later.
Coming up next – Into the “Procedure room.”
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