My 12-year old nephew has been asking me random questions, such as: Where is London? or is England a country? or What was it like twenty years ago? I told him that twenty years ago everything was black and white. That tree you see over there? That used to be black and white. In the late 90’s we started to see color. He seemed to have completely ignored my attempts to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate, as all those questions were apparently just preparatory questions to what he really wanted to ask: what happens in circumcision?

Of course, as a doctor and a caring uncle, I tried to explain the process in the most scientific way I could so as not to elicit fear and trembling: In circumcision, the doctor will chop your penis off. After which he will drill a hole to create a canal and give you a brand new vagina.

We were on the way to the mall, and I offered to buy him a toy and a book and treat him to Italianni’s to compensate for the child abuse. I think the equivalent of this act of terrorism is when my dad told me that the barber would slice my prepuce with a labaha, spit guava juice on my raw dick, and throw me into the river. He claimed that that was really how it was in his time, but thankfully civilization and modern medicine have reached our town by the time it was my turn.

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