I was not circumcised at birth. This operation waited until the summer before I was turning age 9 in September and joining the fourth grade. When we returned to school in the fall our teacher asked all of the fourth graders to bring a summer project and to have a show and tell over the next month. We had a sign up list for each student to select a date and state the name of the project
to be presented. I selected the last date and titled my project,
“Egg Castration Puppets”. The fateful day arrived and I presented my egg carton with twelve eggshell puppets that you could wear on one finger with costumes that covered the hand. Each egg had been decorated with an elaborate face and glued on false eyelashes from the ‘five and dime’. The teacher asked why I had made the dolls and the conversation proceeded:
“I had to have something to do in bed.”
“Why were you in bed?”
“Because I had to rest a lot and be packed in cold ice.”
“Why were resting and packed in cold ice?”
“I had an operation.”
“Tell us about your operation.”
Whereupon I drew a giant picture of a penis which covered the entire blackboard. Then I drew a line through the end and said that it had to be cut off. I meant the foreskin but it appeared that the end of my penis had been chopped off. There were audible gasps and smirking laughter in the classroom.
Immediately the teacher excused me from my show and tell presentation and called for a recess.
All the boys wanted to see what it looked liked so I obliged them in the restroom and they thought I was very brave and still slightly red and swollen. When I returned home from school that evening, Poppy was in a fit of laughter, Rea had a dictionary out to clarify my use of the words castrated and circumcised, and Ruth was fielding many telephone calls of condolence and curiosity from my classmates parents. I had to write 100 times “circumcised not castrated”
Entry – August 14, 2007
