There comes a time in every man’s life when he meets that special someone, gets married and starts a family. There also comes a time when that man has had, say, between 2 and 4 kids and says, “OK, UNCLE! Seriously! What is this, the frickin Brady Bunch? Come on!” That man was me in February of 2006. After countless nights of being lulled to sleep by my son’s horrific night terrors (hey, there’s one now) and after constantly coming home to my sainted wife on her last inch of sanity with our angelic daughter (Satan was an angel once, right?), I decided to say enough is enough to my testicles. Well, not to THEM, they’re staying. Let’s just say I decided to close the lines of communication. Actually that’s not accurate either. Because if I get a boot to the groinial region, my brain will get this message “You just got kicked in the nards! Fetal position! Protect! Protect!” My goal is simply this: When Bartels and James (testicles) think it’s time to buy Wine Coolers (baby), my body will buy a Cactus Cooler (no baby). Now I will indulge you in the tale of my testes, the story of my severance, the narrative of my naughty bits, the oration of my orbs, ok, I’m spent. I’ll tell you about my vasectomy. In this post 9/11 world of managed health care, you gotta go to a pre-op meeting with your Urologist before you can get the snip-snip. Fair enough, but since there are SO many guys fleeing future fatherhood, they actually have a GROUP MEETING or “class”. I am not kidding. It’s like AA for fertility-aholics. “Hi, my name is Chris.” “Hi Chris” “And I’ve not made my wife pregnant for 7 months.” There’s no 12 step program unless you count how many times you almost called to make the appointment. It’s really a 2 step program. #2 is the actual surgery and just before that is #1: Shaving your junk. Yeah, you read that right. It’s the single scariest part of the whole deal. The only question I had for the doctor was “What do I use to shave down there?” He said, “Not a straight blade (duh) and not an electric razor.” Great, that helps me none. Then he implored us to do a thorough job and said the only thing he needed to say on the subject: “If you don’t shave, my male nurse will.” Now you might think he was bluffing or being facetious (look it up), but you’d be wrong. See, I know a guy. This guy didn’t apply himself when it came time to “prepare” for surgery. So, when he showed up and lowered his guard (and pants), the man-nurse had to trim the hedge around the ol’ sundial, if you know what I mean. It gets worse. Many moons later, my buddy is at lunch with another pal and he says, roughly, this: “See that Filipino guy refilling his coke? Yeah, he shaved my balls.” Suffice it to say that I did NOT want to get that close to a Filipino man-nurse so I got busy shaving. I should say that I had some good Filipino buddies in elementary school, so that wasn’t racist. I won’t go into precise detail on this most delicate and precise task except to say that I couldn’t stop thinking about that game where you shave a balloon covered in shaving cream. My worry was for naught as I was greeted by a lovely young female nurse who declared that my work was the best she’d seen!! SUPERSTAR!! With the scariest part over, I sailed through the procedure without incident. You may accuse me of being lazy because “hey can’t you just use protection?” I guess so, but here’s where I’m going to go against every Mtv commercial ever: Condoms are LAME. Also, I’m married. I’m not some college kid fumbling around in the dark trying to prove how responsible I am to Tina. No, Tammy! No, Tanya! I’m not quite out of the woods yet. I need to turn in 2 consecutive negative tests before it’s official. They say that I need to, um, purge the system as many as 20 to 30 times before I’m in the clear. Who says you can’t go back to high school? I will soon be as impotent as a threat from Canada!!!