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I am so excited to have a son. Can I just say that? Seriously, I can't wait to play football with him, teach him some submission grappling, make him mow the yard and trim the hedges, etc. So high was my excitement level over having a son, that I thought it would be only fitting to accompany him to the operating room on his second night in the hospital as he underwent the right of passage we men refer to as Circumcision. **Warning** for those of you who are a little squeamish when it comes to talking about sensitive biological matters, you may want to forgo this particular posting.
cir·cum·ci·sion
noun
1 : the act of circumcising: a : the cutting off of the foreskin of the males that is practiced as a religious rite by Jews and Muslims and as a sanitary measure in modern surgery
The second night of our stay in the hospital, the doctor saunters into our room on her nightly rounds through the hospital. She asks if we'd like to go ahead and get E circumcised tonight? We didn't have a lot going on so we said sure. Being a proud father, I agreed to accompany my boy back to the operating table. I believed that this wasn't something he should have to go through by himself. On some level I also thought that this would be a great sort of "male bonding" experience together. Future fathers be advised, if you would like to bond with your son...take him fishing, wrestle with him, in fact do anything other than escorting him to a room where a doctor will cut the tip of his penis off. Trust me, there are better ways to bond with your child and better memories to be had.
And now, a history lesson. The institution of circumcision was established when God told Abram that in order for He and his descendants to be God's chosen people, the 'ol foreskin-trim was going to have to be a part of the deal.
Genesis 17: 9-12 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring.
Abram had to go and tell his people this lovely little tid-bit, I imagine that had to be a pretty hard sell.
Abram speaks up after dinner. "OK everyone I have an announcement. I talked to Yahweh this morning...he says hello by the way. Anyway, the good news is He's really keen on us being His chosen people, the bad news is it's going to involve some minor surgery for us guys."
"What kind of surgery?" Ira Goldberg asks from the back of the room.
"It's nothing really, we just have to cut our foreskins off, oh and also I don't think were going to be able to eat bacon." Abram tries to gloss over the details.
"Wait a minute, what was that?" Morty Weinstein interjects.
"Yeah I know, no bacon. That really sucks."
"No, no the part before that."
"Oh right, the foreskin thing...I thought that was kind of weird too at first, but...you know, He's God so..." Abram explains. Like I said, a tough sell.
But I digress.
I carried E back to the operating room, I could tell by the look in his eyes, he knew something was up. The overhead florescent lights gave off an unnatural light as they sang their humming song. The doctor placed E down in a chair like contraption that I’m pretty sure was loosely modeled after the middle-ages torture device called the iron maiden. After strapping his head and all "five" of his other appendages down with Velcro straps, doc began to prepare a litany of stainless steel objects many of which resembled the middle-ages torture devices known as thumbscrews. I was beginning to see a theme. Now that I think about it, the whole scene played out like one of those action movies where the hero gets captured by the terrorists, and they take him into an interrogation cell that has a single light bulb hanging above a wooden chair. Then the terrorist says something like, "We have ways to make you talk." as he slowly unwraps a small collection of sharp metal tools. I halfway expected our doctor to bust out some sodium pentothal, and try to coerce E into divulging his secrets from the womb.
Here's an interesting detail, until recently the only pain reliever our doctor used for this procedure was...a pacifier dipped in sugar water. What!!!! If you are going to cut into my son's member, you better be dipping his pacifier in something a little more substantial, like Oxycodone or Ketamine. Thankfully doc had enough foresight to include some injections of a numbing agent in addition to the sugar water. With all the gentleness of a Mafia hitman, the doctor began giving a series of three or four shots directly into my son's penis. E momentarily began shrieking like a mad banshee, I proceeded to black out briefly.
I came to my senses and assured the medical team that I was fine. The look in their eyes led me to believe that I probably looked as queasy as I felt. "Are you Ok?" the doctor asked. I was having hot flashes, dizzy spells, and my legs felt like I was cruising the high seas on the Black Pearl, "aye aye Capn' Sparrow!" I barked at the doctor. "Let's get him a chair" was her response.
Having allowed some time for the local anesthetic to kick in, the doctor began to prepare the child's groinal region. She placed E's "man tackle" into a device that looked like a cross between a Pez dispenser and a cigar cutter. I find it ironic that fathers traditionally hand out cigars to their fellow male friends and family members at the birth of their sons. Not coincidentally has this tradition died down since fathers have been allowed to watch the circumcision procedure.
The details of the circumcision are somewhat vague in my memory. I believe that this is due to my post traumatic stress and the measures my mind took to protect itself. However there are certain images that have been burned into the limbic region of my brain, consequently I have a recurring nightmare where I am holding E in my arms running through a field as we are chased by the doctor whose eyes are full of malcontent as she wields a small French Revolution era Guillotine.
As far as the procedure goes, I seem to remember a stretching of skin, the use of scissors to cut the skin, a disk like device that used a twisting motion to strip the skin, a peeling back of the skin, & finally some clamping of the skin. At one point I found myself involuntarily crossing my legs, as I vicariously felt the pain that E had to be enduring. The doctor tried to make small talk with me, presumably because she could see that my flesh was taking on a sort of green tone and my eyes were rolling back into my head. On the verge of passing out I muttered "Now's not a real good time doc," as I cupped my crotch and keeled over. As the doctor finished up the circumcision there was a lot of screaming in the air, I can only imagine the sounds had to be similar to those on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Cries of pain and anguish rang out in that small room, however the doctor politely asked me to quiet down and gather myself. When I dried my eyes I saw that E was more or less unaffected by the torturous dealings doc had dished out. He was contentedly sucking on his pacifier and looking about the room.
It was hard to change E's diaper for about a week as he healed up. The skin around his "area" was pink and raw, and I felt nauseous every time I looked at it. However, three and a half weeks removed from the event, E seems to have healed up nicely. Our pediatrician says the circumcision looks good, and per my inquiry, doesn't believe E has suffered any long term emotional damage brought on by the ordeal.
I still look forward to teaching my boy to catch a football, how to properly submit an opponent with a kimura, how to shave, tie a tie and play a G chord on the guitar. So, I guess all's well that ends well. If I have another son, I don't know if I will watch him get circumcised. It's too soon to tell whether or not my fragile mind is capable of withstanding another round. If I do indeed have to witness this rite of passage again, I can assure you that I will be heavily sedated.
