One of those tall guy experiences tall guys don’t talk about. I was hobbling down the stairs out front when one of the neighbors started coming up. She’s young and attractive and very sweet and she was going to wait for me down on the sidewalk but ever the gentleman I said, please, come on ahead, and I stood aside. As she passed she smiled and reached into her purse for the mailbox key. She found it and let go the purse, which swung backward as purses do when a lady is climbing stairs, and caught me square in the nuts. Ouch is not really the word for it.

It’s an ever present vulnerability when you’re tall, one learns to be wary of innocently swinging purses. I suppose tall guys are even more vulnerable not only because our most vulnerable spot is at such a testicularly dangerous height, but because the damn things on tall men are bigger and present a better target. Well, this one was a bullseye. Still, I made not a sound nor grimaced, so that she never knew, and instead I stood there in that utterly unique form of agony that only men experience and I smiled. She smiled back. Then I gingerly made it to the bottom of the stairs, stood against the railing and sobbed, if only mentally.

The pain only resonated for maybe an hour. It faded slowly, as it always does, a man’s balls are real drama queens, so sensitive and easily hurt. At last there’s just a dull ache, and we arrange the testicles carefully as we sit so not to outrage them further, the poor things. The dull ache finally slips away, and the only thing left hurting is our big guy pride. And that’s when I wrote this, because a big huge guy getting smacked in the nuts is really quite funny.