By the time I was 19, I thought I knew everything about myself. I thought there was nothing about me that anyone else would know that I wouldn't. But to this day, I often find out things that other people might have been aware of, but came as news to me.
This was certainly the case when I was a sophomore in college. As I've explained before, I didn't get much information on sex from my parents. This made me naive in many ways. My roommate Sind showed me a little book he had gotten with information about sexual issues. He said there was some stuff in there that was kind of funny. Reading through it, I saw that it was rather straight-forward about sex and not really humorous. Much of it I had already knew because of years of reading Ann Landers.
However, I found one of the sections a little confusing at first. An illustration showed the difference between a circumcised and an uncircumcised penis. At that point, all I knew about circumcision is that it was something they did to Jewish baby boys. I was not Jewish, so I thought I was not circumcised. The more I looked at the drawings, the more I realized that the uncircumcised penis had the foreskin that covered the head. The head was exposed on the circumcised illustration. I suddenly realized that I AM CIRCUMCISED!
This had made my head swirl. I remember that during Athletics classes in sixth and seventh grade, I did see boys with uncircumcised penises. However, I thought THEY were circumcised because it looked like the heads of the penises had been lopped off. That didn't make sense to me at the time. Why would anyone want to cut that part off? I honestly did not realize that the head was hidden underneath and would come out during an erection.
This discovery was bewildering because many years earlier, my Dad told my brother Loyd and me a joke that involved circumcision. We had to ask, "What's circumcision?" He said, "It's when they cut the foreskin off of the penis." Please note that he did NOT add, "You boys are circumcised." That was the perfect opportunity to let us know a little bit more about our bodies and he completely failed to recognize that it was something we definitely needed to know.
I am certainly glad I found out before I ever started discussing my penis with anyone. That would have terrible if I'd fallen in love with a Jewish girl and wanted to marry her. "Oh, I can only marry you if you are circumcised." "I'm not circumcised." "Well, if you were willing to have the foreskin removed..." "Oh, there is no way THAT is going to happen!" And of course, I would have eventually found out I was circumcised, but only after she'd married someone else.
Another funny thing is that I was familiar with the term "smegma" just a few months before I discovered my circumcision status. A friend had a button on his jacket that said, "Eat Smegma." I had to ask was it was. The friend said it was that cheesy material that collects under the foreskin and is also known as "headcheese." I thought, "I'm glad I don't have that problem." Now, I know why!
There's been an ongoing movement among men who are angry at their parents for having them circumcised. I am certainly not angry at mine for having me undergo the procedure. I'm just mad that neither one said anything about it. To me, that was much worse than having me mutilated against my will.
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