Circumcision

My beautiful boy, Evan, I am so sorry I did not learn more about circumcision before you were born. I am sorry we made the quick and thoughtless decision to get you circumcised so you would not look different from your dad. It is ok to look different. I am so sorry I never changed your diaper at the hospital and I never saw what you looked like intact. I was ignorant. I am so sorry.

My beautiful boy, Colby, I am so sorry I was weak and caved when it came to the decision about your circumcision.

I am sorry we made the decision to get you circumcised so you would not look different from your dad and your brother. It is ok to look different.

You were born in a birth center and I changed your diapers for a week before you were circumcised. Every time I saw you intact, I felt sad for Evan. I cried and talked to your Dad and others around me. But hardly anyone wanted to talk about it, or if they did, they said it was better to do it as a baby when you would not remember having it done, it would be too painful to have it done as an adult, and your self-esteem would be damaged for looking different. When I saw that device attached to you at the pediatrician's office as he circumcised you, I couldn%uFFFDt believe the cruelty. I felt so small there, like I was a kid again with no say in the matter. But I%uFFFDm an adult now and I should not have been so passive. I should have fought tooth and nail to keep you intact. I am so sorry.

My beautiful husband, I am so sorry that I was weak and passive and agreed to circumcise our boys. I am sorry someone circumcised you. None of you were allowed to decide for yourselves whether to remain intact or not. I could have given your sons that choice, but I did not. I am so sorry.

Jennifer Vaughn, Corvallis, Oregon

I want to share this story. I can't make this stuff up.

One day at work, I was in the hallway talking to a colleague about circumcision. You are familiar with this conversation - the health gains, societal standards, and religious laws associated with being snipped. The conversation was a bit one-sided since neither of us ourselves have an anteater. At the height of the conversation, another coworker, we will call him Jiminy Bonerpants, walked by. Jiminy is a 25 year old, college educated, married engineer from a Middle American state. So as Jiminy passed, we inquired as to the state of his foreskin. Very matter-of-factly, Jiminy replied no, he was not circumcised.

Being the first person we had come upon who would admit to having a meat tulip, we were intrigued and my colleague started asking him some questions. These questions were about fundamental mechanics of operating an uncircumcised penis, i.e. sex, hygiene, etc. I am no doctor, but Jiminy's answers did not make any sense. Physiologically, the answers did not add up. Upon further questioning involving some rudimentary diagrams, the following became clear: Jiminy Bonerpants was and is circumcised, but he did not know this.

Where he got this idea, i cannot tell you, but somewhere in the last 25 years, Jiminy gained the impression that male circumsion involved removing the entire head from the penis. Logically, since he still retained his helmet, he sincerely believed that he was uncircumcised. We laughed at him, and then showed him some German porn to try to clear up his misconceptions.

I struggled with whether or not I should tell anyone at work about this. Surely this would make him a laughing stock and severely damage his reputation. This struggle lasted approximately 10 minutes and within 2 hours, everyone at work was laughing at him.

If you draw the emblem of the "cock-and-balls", (if you are a guy you know what i am talking about), and square it off where the head is supposed to be, it looks like a cannon. Over the next month or so, cannons were being drawn up everywhere- on post-it notes and whiteboards, and being etched into tables. This lasted until management caught on and outlawed any graven images of the cannon.

This story does not say much for the health education being administered in Middle America. As far as I am concerned, there is a minimum amount of operator knowledge that should be required for ownership of any equipment. If you own a car, you should at the least understand w