Many parents remember the “Stranger Danger” message given to children during the 1970s and 80s. Government videos warned children not to talk to people they didn’t know. But a new
message is being trialled in the UK, which its creators think is better at keeping children safe.
“I tried to get the [old] Stranger Danger message across to my son a few years ago and it backfired badly,” says Suzie Morgan, a primary school teacher who lives in Fareham,
Hampshire.
He got frightened and confused, couldn’t sleep at night and was worried somebody was breaking into the house.
Like any parent she wanted to keep her child safe.
But she felt the Stranger Danger message she was teaching – which she herself had grown up with – was unhealthy for her six-year-old son, making him too afraid of the world.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” she says.
So she was hopeful when her son’s school piloted a new safety message. It’s called Clever Never Goes and
was devised by the charity Action Against Abduction.
It aims to make children less afraid of the world, by giving them the confidence to make decisions about their own personal safety.
Morgan says it has given her son more freedom and independence.
Oh my Goat! We just finished reading this awesome pick-a-path story that helps children learn the power of kindness. Have a go… #OatTheGoat
Discovered this fun interactive storybook; it tells the tale of a goat called Oat who endeavours to climb a mountain (making friends along the way). At a few points, it presents as a
“choose your own adventure”-style book (although the forks are artificial and making the “wrong” choice immediately returns you the previous page), but it still does a reasonable job at
looking at issues of bullying and diversity.
I wasn’t fast enough to get an order in on the first (hugely-oversubscribed) print run and had to wait on both the reprint plus international shipping.
This self-proclaimed “better Bundo book” tells a different (educational and relevant) story: in it, Marlon Bundo falls in love with another boy rabbit but their desire to get married is
hampered by the animals’ leader, the Stink Bug, who proclaims that “boy rabbits can’t marry boy rabbits; boy rabbits have to marry girl rabbits!” With the help of the other animals, the
rabbits vote-out the Stink Bug, get married, and go on a lovely bunnymoon… a cheery and uplifting story and, of course, a distinctly trollish way to piss off the (clearly anti-LGBT) Mike Pence. This evening, I decided to offer it as a bedtime story to our little
bookwork. At four years old, she’s of an age at which the highly-hetronormative narratives of the media to which she’s exposed might be only-just beginning to sink in, so I figured this
was a perfect vehicle to talk about difference, diversity, and discrimination. Starting school later this year means that she’s getting closer to the point where she may go from
realising that her family is somewhat unusually-shaped to discovering that some people might think that “unusual” means “wrong”, so this is also a
possible step towards thinking about her own place in the world and what other people make of it.
Our little bookworm, along with bookworm-junior and their mother.
Her initial verdict was that it was “sweet”, and that she was glad that the Stink Bug was vanquished and that Marlon and Wesley got to live together happily-ever-after. I explained that
while the story was made-up, a lot of what it was talking about was something that really happens in this world: that some people think that boys should not marry boys and that girls
should not marry girls, even if they love them, and that sometimes, if those people get to be In Charge then they can stop those people marrying who they love. I mentioned that in our
country we were fortunate enough that boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls, if they want to, but that there are places where that’s not allowed (and there are
even some people who think it shouldn’t be allowed here!). And then I asked her what she thought.
Once you have friends with kids, your life is no longer about you. It’s about your friends’ kids.
Having friends with kids is a huge responsibility. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you like swearing, and having a child in the room would cut into that. Maybe you have ambitions outside
of liking Facebook pictures of wispy-haired toddlers in pumpkin patches. Maybe you’re terrified that your friends will ask you to hold the baby and you won’t know what to do with the
head because its neck doesn’t work yet and you’re afraid you’ll kill it.
Many couples choose not to have friends with kids and find fulfilling friendships with like-minded couples who also value disposable income over propagating the human race. Before you
decide if having friends with kids is right for you, it’s important to ask yourselves a few questions.
Having friends with kids is a huge responsibility. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you like swearing, and having a child in the room would cut into that. Maybe you have ambitions outside
of liking Facebook pictures of wispy-haired toddlers in pumpkin patches. Maybe you’re terrified that your friends will ask you to hold the baby and you won’t know what to do with the
head because its neck doesn’t work yet and you’re afraid you’ll kill it.
Many couples choose not to have friends with kids and find fulfilling friendships with like-minded couples who also value disposable income over propagating the human race. Before you
decide if having friends with kids is right for you, it’s important to ask yourselves a few questions.
I see a lot of ideas online for things to do with your child, but most of them are a lot of work. Many of them involve an unnerving amount of craftiness and/or require going out to
buy things. Almost all of them involve moving around which, many days, is fine, but some days can be pretty rough. N…
I see a lot of ideas online for things to do with your child, but most of them are a lot of work. Many of them involve an unnerving amount of craftiness and/or require going out to
buy things. Almost all of them involve moving around which, many days, is fine, but some days can be pretty rough. Not that I don’t love getting down on the floor and playing with my
kid (I love it a great deal) but I’m an adult in my mid-thirties. I can pretend to be a dinosaur for about 90 minutes (something I happily list on my professional resume) but after an
hour and a half, all bets are off. And given that many days I’m home with my son for over eight hours, things can get a bit dicey.
I’ve taken the liberty of brainstorming some fun child/parent activities in which your child can be adventurous and creative and you can lie on the sofa reading a book. Here’s my list
so far.
Loving, friendly staff provide a great environment for fun and development for babies through preschoolers. Failed an Ofsted inspection in 2016 but were swiftly able to act upon the
report and make the necessary changes and have since gone from strength to strength (once this is out of recent memory, I’d upgrade my review to 5 stars).
Of particular credit to them is the diversity of play and learning activities they provide and their thorough feedback to parents on their children’s development.
I’m not sure that there’s any age that’s too-young at which to try to cultivate an interest in science. Once a child’s old enough to ask why something is the case, every
question poses an opportunity for an experiment! Sometimes a thought experiment is sufficient (“Uncle Dan: why do dogs not wear clothes?”) but other times provide the opportunity for
some genuine hands-on experimentation (“Why do we put flowers in water?”). All you have to do is take every question and work out what you’d do if you didn’t know the answer
either! A willingness to take any problem with a “let’s find out” mentality teaches children two important things: (a) that while grown-ups will generally know more than them, that
nobody has all the answers, and (b) that you can use experiments to help find the answers to questions – even ones that have never been asked before!
“Why do we make jewellery out of different things?” Thanks to the Pitt Rivers Museum for inspiring this question… and helping us to find an
answer.
Sometimes it takes a little more effort. Kids – like all of us, a lot of the time – can often be quite happy to simply accept the world as-it-is and not ask “why”. But because a fun and
educational science activity is a good way to occupy a little one (and remember: all it needs to be science is to ask a question and then try to use evidence to answer it!), I’ve been
keeping a list of possible future activities so that we’ve got a nice rainy-day list of things to try. And because we are, these days, in an increasingly-large circle of breeders, I
thought I’d share some with you.
You don’t strictly need a cement mixer full of custard to demonstrate dilatant (non-Newtonian) fluids, but messiness is engaging all by itself.
Here’s some of the activities we’ve been doing so far (or that I’ve got lined-up for future activities as and when they become appropriate):
Measuring and graphing rainfall
We’ve spent a lot of time lately taking about calendars, weather, and seasons, so I’m thinking this one’s coming soon. All we need is a container you can leave in the
garden, a measuring jug, and some graph paper.
Experimenting with non-Newtonian fluids
You can make a dilatant fluid with cornflower and water: it acts like a liquid, but you can slap it and grab it like a solid. Fine, very wet sand (quicksand!) demonstrates
pseudoplasticity which also explains how paint ‘blobs’ on your brush but is easy to spread thin on the paper.
Magnets
I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to play with magnets: we’ve started already with thanks to Brio wooden railway and talking about the fact that the rolling stock will
attach one way around (and seem to jump together when they get close) but repel the other way around, and we’ve also begun looking at the fact that if you remove a carriage from the
middle of a train the remaining segments are already correctly-aligned in order to be re-attached.
Different kinds of bouncy balls
We’ve had fun before measuring how high different kinds of balls (air-filled rubber football, large solid rubber ball, skeletal rubber ball, small solid rubber ball) bounce when
dropped from a stepladder onto a patio and talking about how ‘squishy’ they are relative to one another, and speculating as to the relationship between the two.
Spotting different subspecies of ladybirds is a great springboard to talking about heritable characteristics and phenotypic variation. Snails are another good candidate.
Demonstrating capillary action/siphoning
Two containers – one with a fluid in and one without – joined over the rim by a piece of paper towel will eventually reach an equilibrium of volume, first as a result of capillary
action causing the fluid to climb the paper and then using a siphon effect to continually draw more over the edge.
Illustrating the solar system (to scale)
It helps adults and children alike to comprehend the scale of the solar system if you draw it to scale. If you’ve got a long street nearby you can chalk it onto the pavement. If not,
you’ll need a very small scale, but doing the Earth and Moon might suffice.
Electricity
Batteries, wires, and LEDs are a moderately safe and simple start to understanding electricity. Taking a ‘dead’ battery from a drained toy and putting it into the circuit shows the
eventual state of batteries. Connecting lights in series or parallel demonstrates in very simple terms resistance. Breaking or joining a circuit illustrates that switches function
identically wherever they’re placed on the circuit.
Vortices
I’m interested in trying to replicate this experiment into making different kinds of standing vortices in water, but I might
have to wait until our little scientist has slightly more patience (and fine motor control!).
Water, tissue paper, and patience is all you need to demonstrate capillary action and siphoning. Food colouring’s an optional bonus.
Centripetal force
We’ve been lucky enough to get to talk about this after using a whirlpool-shaped piece of marble run, but if we hadn’t then I was
thinking we’d wait until the next time it was sunny enough for outdoor water play and use the fact that a full bucket can be spun around without spilling any in a similar way.
Bug counting
Take a quadrant of garden and count the different kinds of things living in it. Multiply up to estimate the population across the garden, or measure different parts (lawn versus
bedding plants versus patio, direct sunlight versus shade, exposed versus covered, etc.) to see which plants or animals prefer different conditions.
Growing plants
Caring for different kinds of plants provides an introduction to botany, and there’s a lot to observe, from the way that plants grow and turn to face the light to the different stages
of their growth and reproduction. Flowers give an attractive result at the end, but herbs and vegetables can be eaten! (Our little scientist is an enormous fan of grazing home-grown
chives.)
Mechanics and force
We’ve taken to occasionally getting bikes out of the shed, flipping them upside-down, and observing how changing the cogs that the chain runs over affects how hard you need to push
the pedals to get movement… but also how much the movement input is multiplied into the movement of the wheel. We’re not quite at a point where we can reliably make predictions based
on this observation, but we’re getting there! I’m thinking that we can follow-up this experiment by building simple catapults to see how levers act as a force multiplier.
Cooking provides opportunities for exploration, too. Bake some bread and you’ve got an excuse to talk about yeast!
Chromotography of inks
I’ve been waiting to do this until I get the chance to work out which felt tip pens are going to give us the most-exciting results… but maybe that’s an experiment we should do
together, too! Colouring-in coffee filter papers and then letting them stand in a cup of water (assuming a water-soluable ink) should produce pretty results… and show the composition
of the inks, too!
Colour mixing
Mixing paint or play-doh is an easy way to demonstrate subtractive colour mixing. We got the chance to do some additive colour mixing using a colour disk spinner at a recent science
fair event, but if we hadn’t I’d always had plans to build our own, like this one.
Structure and form of life
Looking at the way that different plants and animals’ physical structure supports their activities makes for good hands-on or thought-driven experimentation. A day at the zoo gets a
few steps more-educational for a preschooler when you start talking about what penguins are able to do as a result of the shape of their unusual wings and a walk in the park can be
science’d-up by collecting the leaves of different trees and thinking about why they’re different to one another.
Stabbing balloons
The classic magic trick of poking a skewer through a balloon… with petroleum jelly on the skewer… lends itself to some science, so it’s on my to-do list.
Subtractive colour mixing can be demonstrated by mixing paint. Colour and spin a wheel to demonstrate additive mixing.
Surface tension
Water’s such a brilliant chemical because it’s commonplace, safe, and exhibits so many interesting phenomena. Surface tension can be demonstrated by ‘floating’ things like paperclips
on top of the surface, and can be broken by the addition of soap.
Astronomy
In the winter months when the sun sets before bedtime are a great time to show off stars, planets, satellites and the moon. Eyes or binoculars are plenty sufficient to get started.
Life cycles
I was especially pleased when our nursery kept an incubator full of chicken eggs so that the children could watch them hatch and the chicks emerge. We’d looked at this process before
at a farm, but it clearly had a big impact to see it again. Helping to collect eggs laid by my mother’s chickens helps to join-up the circle. Frogspawn and caterpillars provide a way
to look at a very different kind of animal life.
Putting baking soda into things
Different everyday kitchen liquids (water, vinegar, oil…) react differently to the addition of baking soda. This provides a very gentle introduction to chemistry and provides an
excuse to talk about making and testing predictions: now that we’ve seen what cold water does, do you think that hot water will be the same or different?
“Why do some animals have sharp teeth and some have flat teeth?” was a question I posed. We found the answer together (and were wowed by the size of the T-rex skeleton behind the
camera) at the Natural History Museum.
Bubbles and foams
Blowing bubbles through different types of mesh (we just used different kinds of tea towels elastic-banded to the cut-off end of a plastic bottle) demonstrates how you can produce
foams of different consistencies – from millions of tiny bubbles to fewer larger bubbles – because of the permeability of the fabric. And then we wrecked the last tea towel by adding
food colouring to it so we could make coloured foams (“bubble snakes”).
Phase transition
Start with ice and work out what makes it melt: does it melt faster in your hand or in a dish? Does it melt faster or slower if we break it up into smaller parts? If we ‘paint’
pictures on the patio with them, where does the water go? I’m also thinking about ways in which we can safely condense the steam (and capture the vapour) from the kettle onto e.g. a
chilled surface. Once we’re at a point where a thermometer makes sense I was also considering replicating the experiment of measuring the temperature of melting snow: or perhaps even
at that point trying to manipulate the triple point of water using e.g. salt.
Dissection
Take apart the bits of a flower, or look in detail at the parts of a bone-in cut of meat, and try to understand what they’re all for and why they are the way they are.
What floats?
Next time the paddling pool is out, I’d like to start a more-serious look at which things float and which things don’t any try to work out why. What might initially seem intuitive –
dense (heavy-for-their-size) things sink – can be expanded by using plasticine to make a mixture of ‘sinking’ and ‘floating’ vessels and lead to further discovery. I’m also thinking
we need to do the classic ‘raisins in a fizzy drink’ thing (raisins sink, but their rough surfaces trap the bubbles escaping from the now-unpressurised liquid, causing them to float
back up to shed their bubbles).
Get some hands-on biology at your nearest petting zoo. No science in this picture, but plenty of hugging.
So there’s my “now and next” list of science activities that we’ll be playing at over the coming months. I’m always open to more suggestions, though, so if you’re similarly trying to
help shape an enquiring and analytical mind, let me know what you’ve been up to!
At a little over 590 thousand words and spanning 1,349 pages, Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy is almost-certainly among
the top ten longest single-volume English-language novels. It’s pretty fucking huge.
I’ll stick with the Kindle edition: I fear that merely holding the paperback would be exhausting.
I only discovered A Suitable Boy this week (and haven’t read it – although there are some good reviews that give me an inclination to) when, on a whim, I decided to try to get
a scale of how much I’d ever written on this blog and then decided I needed something tangible to use as a comparison. Because – give or take – that’s how much I’ve written here, too:
At 593,457 words, this blog wouldn’t fit into that book unless we printed it on the covers as well.
Of course, there’s some caveats that might make you feel that the total count should be lower:
It might include a few pieces of non-content code, here and there. I tried to strip them out for the calculation, but I wasn’t entirely successful.
It included some things which might be considered metadata, like image alt-text (on the other hand, sometimes I like to hide fun messages in my image alt-text, so perhaps they
should be considered content).
On the other hand, there are a few reasons that it perhaps ought to be higher:
Post titles (which sometimes contain part of the content) and pages outside of blog posts are not included in the word count.
I’ve removed all pictures for the purpose of the word count. Tempting though it was to make each worth a thousand words, that’d amount to about another one and a half million words,
which seemed a little excessive.
Another reason for not counting images was that it was harder than you’d think to detect repeat use of images that I’ve used too many times. Like this one.
Of course, my blog doesn’t really have a plot like A Suitable Boy (might compare well to the even wordier Atlas Shrugged, though…): it’s a mixture of mostly
autobiographical wittering interspersed with musings on technology and geekery and board games and magic and VR and stuff. I’m pretty sure that if I knew where my life would be now, 18
years ago (which is approximately when I first started blogging), I’d have, y’know, tried to tie it all together with an overarching theme and some character development or something.
Or perhaps throw in the odd plot twist or surprise: something with some drama to keep the reader occupied, rather than just using the web as a stream-of-conciousness diary of whatever
it is I’m thinking about that week. I could mention, for example, that there’ll be another addition to our house later this year. You heard it here first (unless you already heard it
from somewhere else first, in which case you heard it there first.)
Brought up in a world of tiny, bright, UHD colour touchscreens, Annabel seemed slightly underwhelmed by the magic of a sonograph picture of her future baby brother.
Still: by the end of this post I’ll have hit a nice, easy-to-remember 594,000 words.
She’s 16 months old and while she’s gotten the hang of a few words (notably “cat” – she’s very interested in cats), this morning she surprised and delighted us all as I took her off
to nursery by turning to her mother, waving, and saying “buh-bye mum-muh.” Totally adorable.
On Monday, Tiny turned 6 months old. For half a year now, I’ve been a parent. It still feels pretty weird to call myself that, though. Parent is a word that conjures up a mental image
of someone strong, nurturing, patient, and above all who knows all the answers. In many ways, I feel more like I’m discovering life alongside my daughter than guiding her along the
path.
…
Being out-and-about with a baby is a whole different experience. Strangers will strike up a conversation – and, more amazingly still, I don’t usually mind. Tiny is such a blessing
that I can’t begrudge others a few minutes of cooing. The biggest difference isn’t other people, though.
…
Ruth’s just written about her first six months of being a parent. It’s worth a read.
This is the second part of a three-part blog post about my vasectomy. Did you read the first part, yet?
My vasectomy was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, so I left work early in order to cycle up to the hospital: my plan was to cycle up there, and then have Ruth ride my bike back while JTA drove me home. For a moment, though, I panicked
the clinic receptionist when she saw me arrive carrying a cycle helmet and pannier
bag: she assumed that I must be intending to cycle home after the operation!
The Elliot-Smith Clinic lives in an old prefab building buried at the back end of the hospital campus. If you think it looks scary in this picture, imagine what it’s like when it’s
dark and you’re going there to be stabbed in the genitals.
It took me long enough to find the building, cycling around the hospital in the dark, and a little longer still to reassure myself that this underlit old building could actually be a
place where surgery took place.
My tweet upon arriving at the clinic.
Despite my GP‘s suggestion to the contrary, the staff didn’t feel the need to take me though their counselling process, despite
me ticking some (how many depends primarily upon how you perceive our unusual relationship
structure) of the “we would prefer to counsel additionally” boxes on their list of criteria. I’d requested that Ruth arrive at about the beginning of the process specifically so that she could “back me up” if
needed (apparently, surgeons will sometimes like to speak to the partner of a man requesting a vasectomy), but nobody even asked. I just had to sign another couple of consent forms to
confirm that I really did understand what I was doing, and then I was ready to go!
I’d shaved my balls a few days earlier, at the request of the clinic (and also at Matt‘s suggestion, who
pointed out that “if I don’t, they’ll do it for me, and I doubt they’ll be as gentle!” – although it must be pointed out that as they were already planning to take a blade to
my junk, I might not have so much to worry about), which had turned out to be a challenge in itself. I’ve since looked online and found lots of great diagrams showing you
which parts you need to shave, but the picture I’d been given might as well have been a road map of Florence, because no matter which way up I turned it, it didn’t look anything like my
genitals. In the end, I just shaved all over the damn place, just to be sure. Still not an easy feat, though, because the wrinkled skin makes for challenging shaving: the best technique
I found was to “stretch” my scrotum out with one hand while I shaved it with the other – a tricky (and scary) maneuver.
If I’d had a diagram like this, rather than an Italian street map, I might have stood a better chance of just shaving what I needed to shave.
After sitting in the waiting room for a while, I was ushered through some forms and a couple more questions of “are you sure?”, and then herded into a curtained cubicle to change into a
surgical gown (over the top of which I wore my usual dressing gown). The floor was cold, and I’d forgotten to bring my slippers, so I kept my socks on throughout. I sat in a separate
waiting area from the first, and attempted to make small talk with the other gents waiting there. Some had just come out of surgery, and some were still waiting to go in, and the former
would gently tease the latter with jokes about the operation. It’s a man thing, I guess: I can’t imagine that women would be so likely to engage in such behaviour (ignoring, for a
moment, the nature of the operation).
There are several different approaches to vasectomy, and my surgeon
was kind enough to tolerate my persistent questions as I asked about the specifics of each part of the operation. He’d said – after I asked – that one of the things he liked about doing
vasectomies was that (unlike most of the other surgeries he performs) his patients are awake and he can have a conversation while he worked, although I guess he
hadn’t anticipated that there’d ever be anybody quite so interested as I was.
Warning: The remainder of this blog post describes a surgical procedure, which some people might find squicky. For the protection of those who are of a weak stomach, some photos
have been hidden behind hyperlinks: click at your own risk. (though honestly, I don’t think they’re that bad)
With my scrotum pulled up through a hole in a paper sheet, the surgeon began by checking that “everything was where it was supposed to be”: he checked that he could find each vas (if
you’ve not done this: borrow the genitals of the nearest man or use your own, squeeze moderately tightly between two fingers the skin above a testicle, and move around a bit until you
find a hard tube: that’s almost certainly a vas). Apparently surgeons are supposed to take care to ensure that they’ve found two distinct tubes, so they don’t for example sever the same
one twice.
Next, he gave the whole thing a generous soaking in iodine. This turned out to be fucking freezing. The room was cold enough already, so I asked him to close the window while my
genitals quietly shivered above the sheet.
Next up came the injection. The local anaesthetic used for this kind of operation is pretty much identical to the kind you get at the dentist: the only difference is that if your
dentist injected you here, that’d be considered a miss. While pinching the left vas between his fingertips, the surgeon squirted a stack of lidocaine into the cavity
around it. And fuck me, that hurt like being kicked in the balls. Seriously: that stung quite a bit for a few minutes, until the anaesthesia kicked in and instead the
whole area felt “tingly”, in that way that your lips do after dental surgery.
Pinching the vas (still beneath the skin at this point) in a specially-shaped clamp, the surgeon made a puncture wound “around” it with a sharp-nosed pair of forceps, and pulled the vas
clean through the hole. This was a strange sensation – I couldn’t feel any pain, but I was aware of the movement – a “tugging” against my insides.
A quick snip removed a couple of centimetres from the middle of it (I gather that removing a section, rather than just cutting, helps to reduce the – already slim – risk that
the two loose ends will grow back together again) and cauterised the ends. The cauterisation was a curious experience, because while I wasn’t aware of any sensation of heat, I could
hear a sizzling sound and smell my own flesh burning. It turns out that my flaming testicles smell a little like bacon. Or, if you’d like to look at it another way (and I can almost
guarantee that you don’t): bacon smells a little bit like my testicles, being singed.
Next up came Righty’s turn, but he wasn’t playing ball (pun intended). The same steps got as far as clamping and puncturing before I suddenly felt a sharp pain, getting rapidly worse.
“Ow… ow… owowowowowow!” I said, possibly with a little more swearing, as the surgeon blasted another few mils of anaesthetic into my bollocks. And then a little more. And
damnit: it turns out that no matter how much you’ve had injected into you already, injecting anaesthetics into your tackle always feels like a kick in the nuts for a few
minutes. Grr.
The removed sections of my vas, on a tray (actually mine)
You can see the “kink” in each, where it was pulled out by the clamp. Also visible is the clamp itself – a cruel-looking piece of equipment, I’m sure you’ll agree! – and the discarded
caps from some of the syringes that were used.
The benefit of this approach, the “no-scalpel vasectomy”, is that the puncture wounds are sufficiently small as to not need stitches. At the end of the surgery, the surgeon just stuck a
plaster onto the hole and called it done. I felt a bit light-headed and wobbly-legged, so I sat on the operating table for a few minutes to compose myself before returning to the
nurses’ desk for my debrief. I only spent about 20 minutes, in total, with the surgeon: I’ve spent longer (and suffered more!) at the dentist.
Later, I would receive this “Happy Vasectomy” card from Liz and Simon. Thanks, guys!
By the evening, the anaesthetic had worn off and I was in quite a bit of pain, again: perhaps worse than that “kick in the balls” moment when the anaesthetic was first injected, but
without the relief that the anaesthetic brought! I took some paracetamol and – later – some codeine, and slept with a folded-over pillow wedged between my knees, after I discovered how
easy it was to accidentally squish my sore sack whenever I shifted my position.
The day after was somewhat better. I was walking like John Wayne, but this didn’t matter because – as the nurse had suggested – I spent most of the day lying down “with my feet as high
as my bottom”. She’d taken the time to explain that she can’t put a bandage nor a sling on my genitals (and that I probably wouldn’t want her to, if she could), so the correct
alternative is to wear tight-fitting underwear (in place of a bandage) and keep my legs elevated (as a sling). Having seen pictures of people with painful-looking bruises and swelling
as a result of not following this advice, I did so as best as I could.
Today’s the day after that: I’m still in a little pain – mostly in Righty, again, which shall henceforth be called “the troublesome testicle” – but it’s not so bad except when I forget
and do something like bend over or squat or, I discovered, let my balls “hang” under their own weight, at all. But altogether, it’s been not-too-bad at all.
Or, as I put on my feedback form at the clinic: “A+++. Recommended. Would vasectomy again.”
(thanks due to Ruth, JTA, Matt, Liz, Simon,
Michelle, and my mum for support, suggestions, and/or fetching things to my bed for me while I’ve been waddling
around looking like John Wayne, these past two days)
What’s no joke, though, is the human population explosion. There’re just too damn many of us, as I explained last year. That’s the primary reason
behind my decision, held for pretty-much the entirety of my adult life, to choose not to breed.
World population for the last 12,000 years.
I’m fully aware that the conscious decision to not-breed by a single individual – especially in the developed world – makes virtually no difference to the global fate of humanity. I’m
under no illusion that my
efforts as a vegetarian are saving the world either. But just like the voter who casts a ballot for their party – even though they know it won’t make a difference to the outcome of
the election – I understand that doing the right thing doesn’t necessarily have to have a directly quantifiable benefit.
Somehow, this delicious-looking BLT makes an appearance almost any time I talk about overpopulation or vegetarianism. This is the fifth time.
That’s why I’m finally taking the next obvious step. Next month, after literally years of talking about it, I’m finally going to put my genitals where my mouth is (hmm… maybe that
wasn’t the best choice of words)! Next week, I’m getting a vasectomy.
The “F” is for “Fuck me you’re going to put a scalpel WHERE?”
I first asked a doctor about the possibility of vasectomy about a decade ago. He remarked upon my age, and said – almost jokingly – “Come back in ten years if you still feel the same
way!” I almost wish that I still had the same GP now, so that I could do exactly that. Instead, I spoke about a year ago to my (old) GP here in Oxford, who misled me into thinking that
I would not be able to get the surgery on the NHS, and would have to have it done privately. Finally, a second doctor agreed to sign off their part of the consent form, and I was good
to go. The secret, it seems, is persistence.
I suppose I’ll be eligible for a Golden Snip Award. Click through for more information.
I’m sure that this is a decision that won’t be without it’s controversies. And believe me: over the course of the most-of-my-life-so-far that I’ve hinted at or talked about doing this,
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard all of the arguments. Still: I feel like I ought to pick up on some of the things I’ve heard most-often –
“Breeder Bingo” card. Complete a line, get a free case of contraceptives!
What if you change your mind?
Even despite medical advances in recent decades in vasectomy reversal, vasectomy should still be considered a “one way trip”. Especially when I was younger, people seemed concerned that
I would someday change my mind, and then regret my decision not to spawn children.
I suppose that it’s conceivable – unlike my otherwise potential offspring – but it’s quite a stretch, to believe that I might someday regret not having children (at least not
biologically: I have no problem with adopting, co-parenting, fostering, or any number of other options for being involved in the upbringing of kids). I honestly can’t see how that’d
come about. But even if we do take that far-fetched idea: isn’t it equally possible that somebody might ultimately regret having children. We take risks in our lives with
any choice that we make – maybe I’ll someday regret not having taken my degree in Law or Chemistry or Rural Studies. Well then: c’est la vie.
Do you just not like children?
Children are great, and I’d love to get the chance to be involved in raising some. However, I don’t define myself by that wish: if I never have the opportunity to look after any kids,
ever, then that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world: I’d just spend my years writing code in a house full of cats. I have no doubt that raising children is great (for many people),
but just like there are plenty of people for whom it’s not great, there are also plenty of people – like me – who could be happy either way. No biggie!
There are those who have said that this laid-back “take it or leave it” approach, especially when coupled with the more-recent act of rendering myself infertile, will make me less
attractive to women. Leaving aside the implicit sexism in that claim, wouldn’t a fair retort be to point out that a woman who is looking for monogamous breeding probably isn’t
my “type” to begin with!
But if only we could make sure only the RIGHT people breed…
But you should be breeding?
This argument’s usually based on the idea that I’m somehow genetically superior and that my children wouldn’t be such a strain on the world as somebody else’s, or that
mine would have a significantly better-than-average chance of curing cancer, solving world hunger, or something.
Only sterilisation can prevent the detonation of the planet. Maybe.
And let’s face it, any child of mine would be just as likely to be the one to build a really big bomb. Or create a super-virus. Or just engineer the collapse the world’s economies into
a prehistoric barter economy in a technophobic future anarchy. Attaboy.
In any case, I’m pretty sure that my personal contribution to the betterment of the world ought not to be a genetic one. I’d like to make a difference for the people who are around
right now, rather than hypothetical people of the future, and I’d far rather leave ideas in my wake than a handful of genes. I’m sure that’s not the case for everybody, but then – it
doesn’t have to be.
It takes balls to have a vasectomy. Literally.
Or are there some arguments that I’ve missed? If you’re among the folks who feel really strongly about this, then you’ve got about seven days to make them, and then it’s off to the
clinic for me! Just remember: what’s right for me isn’t necessarily what’s right for you, and vice-versa. Just because I use Emacs doesn’t mean that some other, inferior text editor might not be the right choice for you.
I wonder what my surgeon might say to the possibility of me live-tweeting the process? Would anybody be interested? (I promise not to include any photos.)
(with thanks to Nina Paley for permission to use the comics)
