Just a Trim

So I had a vasectomy last week.

Funny thing to write about on a public blog. I found myself feeling slightly defensive. Why write about it? Why wave the poor clipped buggers about in the public domain, where nobody wants to see them?

Various reasons occurred. Some of the same reasons I was having it done in the first place - men taking reproductive responsibility in the modern age, brag brag, I'm middle aged and have quite enough children already, oh, I don't know, have you seen the list of side-effects on the male pill? Reading that made me consider sawing the little chaps off by hand as a viable alternative. Honestly, hormones, don't mess with them.

But mostly I'm going to write about it because it's funny. A funny thing to go through, at the very least. And I'd never miss a chance to write self-deprecating snark on the best of days. The worst of days are always getting posted.

- Hello, I'll be your surgeon, lie down, whoops, there we go, that's the worst bit done, said the surgeon in one smoothly-flowing introductory sentence as he flipped me on to my back, whisked away my clothes and rammed a three-inch long needle into both sides of my groin and nutsack. And then he smiled nicely and trotted out, leaving me lying in stunned agony. Although in (vas) deference to his skill, the agony receeded very quickly, and I didn't even notice I'd bled all over the bed until the nurse came in to slap a label on my wrist.

He was a glib man, alright. All through the proceedure, he kept popping up over the curtain they'd erected over my nethers to grin and ask me questions about acting. Disjointed isn't the word. One minute he'd be wondering who my favourite director is, the next he'd be rummaging around with the exasperated air of someone trying to find car keys in a crowded handbag and coming up with half a pack of gum for the third time in a row.

And all this in Swedish, I might add. The Swedish word for scrotum is the rather beautiful pung (fully, testikelpung, lit. a testicle pouch). Beautiful but misleading. Onomatopoeiacally, it sounds like a bronze potato, something that will bounce resiliently with a metallic chime if dropped. Do not be fooled, real testes do not possess this quality. Onomatopoeia is a dubious concept on the whole, I reckon, as might be expected from a word that sounds descriptive of the place my semi-house-broken toddler occasionally urinates.

I reeled home. Still entirely numb, my testicles felt like they reached my knees. It was like walking with a large velvet pouffe in my trousers. Later, as the drugs wore off, I discovered the large velvet pouffe had been stuffed with broken glass. Optimistically, I was booked to teach an evening drama class to some teenagers. This, I cancelled. You can't improve someone's acting whilst lying curled up on the floor cradling your crotch. Not with much aplomb, anyway.

Obviously, both my children wanted nothing but to sit in my lap and bounce up and down for the next five days. And they both cried when I wouldn't let them. Rather you than me, my dears. The excuse I settled on was that I had sore legs, and the doctor had told me to rest. F appreciated this, C was less convinced. A daddy that cannot dandle you is a poor sort of creature, a sort of beakless toucan. Without the main attraction, it seems cruel to keep the remainder alive.

In the week before the op, I was wondering if I was going to have psychological fall-out. On top of any potential hideous scarring, operational mispractice, etc, etc, you know. Like any idiotic near-forty-year-old male, I was of course most concerned with my percieved masculinity and whether it would be dented. Sterilisation, not being able to have children, that's a touch drastic, isn't it? One of those vital definitions of life, removed from the list.

Meh. I've done my bit for my selfish genes. Hair shirt spartan that I am, I actually feel more manly for having had it done. Yes! Behold, I'm still this macho despite having neatly scissored testicles! GASP IN AWE! Or so shouts the brute in my hindbrain. The rest of me is quite happy to move quietly on and not mention it again. That's clearly not the rest of me writing this blog and linking it to Facebook, is it, eh? Good old hindbrain brute. He's handy with the old social media.

I don't know. People don't seem to talk about vasectomies very much. We're either too polite or too scared. Moving to Sweden has made me far less of either of those. Or possibly made me a lot more stupid, which could be mistaken for rude bravery in the right light. Apologies if you're finding this terribly distasteful. And then well done for reading on this far. It's okay, there aren't going to be any pictures.

Anyway. Scarely a week later, all was back to normal.

As normal as bald balls can be considered, that is, especially when still rather colourfully pigmented from the bruising. Peachy, let's say. A testament to the skill of that sunny surgeon. Now, the only reminder of that brief pain is seeing F sporadically hobbling down the hallway, playing the 'sore legs' game, mimicking my now-vanished tender gait with a precise eye.

If only she knew.

Red in Gum and Nail

C can nearly walk, talk and sleep overnight. How did this happen? I've barely blogged about her at all in the last three months, beyond glancing referrals in the background of the ongoing war of potty training. She ought to have the common courtesy to stop developing when I'm distracted.

Mind you, I'm relatively secondary in C's order of things too. Mummy is ahead of me, she gets coos and smiles where I tend to get furious screams because I'm slower with the bottle deployment.

Top of the list is big sister F.

F tells it like it is. She plays the headbutt game properly, where you lean in and bump foreheads and say "bump!". Mummy and Daddy are all cotton-woolly about that one, they don't commit to the bump.

F waves slices of cucumber during dinner and says "Greeny greeny greeny greeny!" Mummy and Daddy are all, "hey, no, sit quietly and masticate your gruel correctly." They don't understand how it is in the real world. They don't get the problems that a baby faces on a day-to-day basis, not like big sister F.

She's learned, from F, that parents need to be bullied in order to function at peak efficiency. Take no nos for an answer. If ignored, redouble your howls. A sleeping parent deserves neither sympathy nor mercy. It's a dog-eat-dog-or-possibly-formula-until-you've-got-teeth world out there, and only the stroppiest survive.

I have tried to learn from F's example. If I too could receive looks of unconditional love from the recipient of a poked face or yanked forelock, I reckon life could be so much easier, Perhaps if I steal peoples' toys, I'll make more friends and get more jobs.

Or maybe C is just waiting to declare an all-out war of retribution until she's cracked independant walking.

Changelings

I don't have a daughter F any more. She's gone, vanished and replaced by something new.

Before I startle anyone into panic, this isn't a sudden dark turn for the blog. No developmental illnesses, no terrible accidents. No, this is far worse. This is Disney.

If I call F by name at the moment, she tells me "No, actually, I'm called Tristan." Tristan refers to himself in the third person, suspiciously similarly to F's general habit, and doesn't do things like eating up all his food at lunchtime, tidying his toys or sleeping in his bed. Tristan sleeps in the Pixie Dust Tree (F's castle) on a sheepskin rug.

Tristan isn't even called Tristan in the original movies. Disney's Fairies series, starring Tinkerbell, also feature a Dust Elf who makes sure the other elves get their daily dose of fairy dust. He's called Terence in the English version, Tristan in the Swedish. Not sure why that translation got made, V says Terence would be harder for Swedes to say. No great loss, it's not perhaps the most whimsical of pixie names. Up there with Nigel the Cleaning Fairy or mischevious tax sprite Arthur Jones.

But it gets worse, worse than having an alter ego F can hide behind when she feels ornery (95% of the time).

As a child, I was hooked on Disney too. I was Mickey Mouse. Similar woes betided those who felt I might not actually be that entity, I'm sure. Chief of those was that I decided everyone else in the household needed a Disney Character to be referred to as, and Dad got the roughest end of the stick when I decided he was Pluto the dog.

I am well served. I am now Tinkerbell.