Admittedly, this is an unorthodox way to re-enter the blogging world but I wrote it for a writing site and thought I would share. I apologize in advance for any offense I cause.
Please excuse my long absence. After surviving flood and frustration, my dumb disease took over and I haven't been my best. I will endeavor from this point forward to post more regularly.
I am surrounded by penises, and the males attached, in very many ways, to them. Of the six humans living in my home, four have outdoor plumbing, and of those four, two of them are “hung up”, so to speak, about their anatomies and parade them about like gold medals. And no, I am not envious nor do I feel left out, I’m just tired and distracted by all the dangling.
The chief offender and leader of the phallology procession is the toddler, full of pomp and circumstance, penis and testicles. The child is obsessed with his genitals. He holds them, he talks about them, he loves them. He also loves the word itself. Penis. I hear it a hundred times a day. Sometimes, I long for the days when only doctors and nurses used that word. Truly, when did we as a society become determined to be so literal and biological about our own anatomy? Does anyone remember? Whenever it occurred, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I distinctly recall telling the teenagress, then all of two, that she grew in my uterus and the subsequent look I received from my grandmother in response. In her day, one didn’t even use the word pregnant. But I digress, back to the toddler…
I’ve got a penis.
I know Anthony.
You don’t have a penis?
No, I don’t Anthony.
I have a penis.
You told me that, Anthony.
He bonds with the other penis carriers.
Uncle David, you have a penis.
(This makes Uncle David, the 14-year-old Teenagrrrrr, happy and proud to be one of the Brotherhood of the Outdoor Plumbing. He just doesn’t speak of it as much, at least to me.)
Yes, I do (spoken in boastful crescendo).
Uncle Robert, you have a penis.
Anthony, stop talking about my penis (Robert, David’s twin and fellow Teenagrrrrr, is, thank the Lord, more subdued about his anatomy, at least in my presence).
Recently, the toddler has taken to using the word penis as a derogatory term, though how he made that switch, I don’t know. I suspect it has something to do with the teenagrrrrrs. Whilst watching “The Daily Show” with Aunt Jessica, he looked at Jon Stewart and called him a “penis head”. Lord knows what he would call Bill O’Reilly.
Until today, I had not instituted any counter measures to deal with Anthony’s rampant phallology other than telling him it’s not nice to call people “penis head”. The child is not yet four and, if I make too big a deal about what he is doing, I am afraid he’ll either do it more or hide his love away and I am not attempting to raise a wildly masturbating and chafed grandson. This morning, though, he put his second-only-to-his-penis-in-how-much-he-loves-it kazoo on his head, and I’m not talking the one attached to his neck. Since, and I hope you’ll agree with me, that’s just plain gross, I “had words” with him over his behavior.
Anthony, don’t you ever do that again. Kazoos do NOT go on the end of your penis.
This made him cry. I separated the two things he loves most in this world. I am a terrible person. He has yet to recover. Who knew the toddler could hold such a grudge?
Second in the phallology parade line and, I believe, a large reason why the toddler is as obsessed as he is, is David the Teenagrrrrr. He loves his penis, too, and has no qualms letting it pop out to visit every few minutes throughout the day.
Yes, each weekday when he comes home from school, the first thing he likes to do is change out of his school clothes and into a pair of boxers. The man-cub loves his comfort and who am I, a woman who spends a good portion of her own time in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt to argue with him over it. The trouble is that boxers have an easy access fly and all of a sudden my son has a man penis.
Yes, the child I nursed and loved has reached puberty; and, all of a sudden, that little thing I wiped clean as I changed his diapers is the envy of his peers (and Lord knows, possibly the desire of some of the females as well). The boy has no locker room insecurity issues. This disturbs me on a level I cannot vocalize as of yet and, for now, I am just trying not to think about it.
The problem is that it wants to be thought about. Like Anthony, young David likes to hold his parts, I suppose to reassure himself that he is the penis god that he thought he was. That alone brings attention to the area. But then all he has to do is shift his weight or turn a certain way, and, Bob’s-Your-Uncle, out it pops to say hello. I’m having a difficult time conversing with the kid because I expend so much effort just keeping my eyes focused on his eyes. So I made him sew up the flies of his boxers but, cue his proud boastful crescendo once more, the stitches keep popping and unraveling. The boy needs to find himself a better lounging costume. So I am at a loss as to how to deal with this House of the Rising Penis. I suppose I just need to figure out a way to stop letting it bother me but other than using copious amounts of pharmaceuticals and alcohol, which I don't do any more, at least the alcohol part, I haven’t yet solved that conundrum.
