I rarely do things the “conventional” way. And when I say “rarely”, I mean never. It’s not that I don’t want to do them the same way everyone else does, it’s just not as interesting or exciting. I’ll give you an example: Who wants to meet someone, date for a while, get engaged, buy a house, have 2.5 kids, a family dog and two car garage? Not me. No, I’m more like the “meet a hot, college-aged girl, knock her up, move into an apartment together, buy a house, get married and be scorned by your Catholic mother for life” kind of guy. I mean, who needs to court and woo and romance and date when you can cut to the chase? ;)

I’m not saying doing it the conventional way is bad or wrong. I mean, who doesn’t like some vanilla, missionary sex once in a while? It’s not that I don’t like “regular”. I do. I just tend to never do it that way. Here’s an example of where I should’ve gone the conventional route.

I remember the day vividly – Laugh Mom, our two kids and I had just moved from our home state of Michigan in to a rental house in New Jersey and mapped out everything we wanted to do when we got to the New York metro area: go to the theater, experience the City’s finest dining, discover new bands and music venues — you know, have a regular, adult life. Life was looking good without having to drag our older, potty-trained, old enough for babysitters and god awful-behaving kids with us. But that would be conventional.

See, one of the things we planned to do, along with have a normal adult life, was not have any more kids. Yep, the ol’ snip-’er-oo was part of the plan. I mean, we were actually going to do the responsible thing and spare the world from more misbehaved children.

I sat down at my desk around 3 PM after a day full of meetings, deadlines and “OMG I NEED THIS RIGHT NOW!” interruptions only to see the caller ID at work flash our home phone number. Before picking up the phone I briefly fantasized that my wife had found a babysitter and that we would start living our grown up life.

“Hi hon, how are you?”

“Hi. Um, I’m not sure how to say this, but – you know that appointment you have scheduled for Saturday? Well, you can put that off for like, 9 months.”

And that’s when my jaw conventionally dropped. Now don’t get me wrong, our baby is the best thing in the world. And unlike our first, we’re a little older and lot more capable of dealing with everything that comes along with babies. But what’s done was done and we now have another baby. So I did the right thing and around nine and half months later scheduled a vasectomy (Don’t judge, she was breast feeding and there’s just NO WAY she would get pregnant having sex one time. Again.)

I never really thought about the surgery much until about a week before. And it was around that time that I started to go crazy. Go ahead and Google vasectomy. Then look up some of the pictures. It’s like the Jim Rose Circus Side Show of balls. Blue ones, purple ones, balls with massive scars and balls that are bigger than a pair of honeydews. I was convinced that the best case scenario is that I would be permanently disfigured and walking like a bow-legged cowboy after this was over — if I was lucky.

The big day couldn’t get here quick enough. At this point there was no excuse for not going and having the procedure. Trust me, I tried to think of some.

“There’ll be less.”

“I won’t want sex anymore.”

“IT’S A SCALPEL IN MY JUNK.”

Scorned by the birth and subsequent sleepless nights from our third boy, none of these totally legitimate reasons convinced my wife as valid reasons for putting it off again. And with that, off we went to the butcher. I mean doctor.

Along with stellar debating skills is my ability to rationalize not walking anywhere. I grew up in Detroit, and as such we drive everywhere motherf’er. Fortunately we live right by the hospital, and when I say “right by” I mean I could walk there. I’m not saying I DID walk there, I’m just saying I could.

The trifecta of my abilities is that I’m a great listener. Now, I may not actually DO anything, but I sure will acknowledge that I HEARD you. Or pretend that I heard you. For consistency’s sake — because who doesn’t like an inconsistent person? — I listened to the anesthesiologist’s orders: No food after midnight. And that lasted until about 9:00 the next morning, when I woke up and was going to call Sally Struthers and ask if she’d appear on TV for me. I was starving and there’s no way my 6’6” frame could go 12 hours without eating.

In order to appease the “I swear I must have Type 1 Diabetes because my Dad does but not really Type 1 because the blood work keeps saying ‘no’ but I know better” complex I have, I ate a half of an English muffin with peanut butter on it and a small glass of water. That was all I needed to hold me over until I could get home after 2 PM and stuff my face. Flash forward to my hospital check-in and I’m feeling good, about to do the “responsible” thing. Gown? Check. Annoying plastic ID thing around my wrist? Check. Ass hanging out of the back? Check.

I was wheeled in and ready for the drugs. Knock me out, I don’t want to know what’s about to happen. Like, literally, I sat through LASIK surgery wide awake and watched a laser burn my eyes and went through temporary blindness and that was 100% preferable to someone fondling me with a knife.

“OK, I have to ask you this question. It’s just routine,” says the anesthesiologist before inserting the IV. “Did you have anything to eat?”

I know what you’re thinking. “Dave, just say ‘no’ and you’re good to go.” But that would be conventional. And because I was in Boy Scouts and that made up George Washington story stuck with me, I couldn’t lie. I told him that I barely had anything. Like, nothing that would even show up in an X-ray or colonoscopy. “A half an English muffin, and that was like 5 hours ago.”

He stopped his prep work.

“Why did you tell me that?” he asked. “Now I can’t give you the anesthetic.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. We’ll have to do a local instead,” he insisted.

For those unfamiliar with what a “local” is, I’ll put it this way: he wasn’t referring to traveling out of town and looking for a resident of said town. Nope, he meant a giant needle in my balls. Several times. Locally.

My heart started to beat a lot faster while I tried to rationalize what was about to happen. Just as my head was racing with excuses to try and get out of the operating room, I felt a draft down below.

“We’re going to have to shave your… Oh. It looks like you took care of that yourself.”

And with a wink at the nurses I laid back and wanted to pretend this wasn’t going to be a big deal. I mean, it’s a needle. I’ve accidentally sawed my finger open with a handsaw — and that was a rusty, old, jagged tooth saw. This was a needle. In fact, there’s so much skin down there “I probably won’t even feel it”, I thought.

“Um, why is my ass wet?” I asked.

“Oh that’s iodine. We want to make sure the area won’t get infected.”

So now not only am I panicked and mildly sure there’s major shrinkage going on, but after repeated pouring and soaking I’m thoroughly convinced I’m also going to have my butt crack dyed yellow. Just when I though “this can’t get any worse”, a nurse asked if I wanted a tetanus shot in my ass or my shoulder. Admittedly laughing at the spelling of tetanus in my head after she said it, I chose shoulder because, as I frequently offer anyone in pain, I’ll happily redirect the focus of their pain by hitting them elsewhere. Your arm hurts? I’ll punch you in the leg. See? Reverse psychology. I think my exact words were “Shoulder. There’s already enough going on down there.”

And with that she stuck my shoulder with a needle so large I was waiting to look up and see her wearing a Groucho Marx moustache and glasses and a comically large bow tie. This had to be a prank, because the vial was huge. Like, a 2-liter-with-an-arrow-tied-to-it huge.

“Is it supposed to hurt that much?” I asked.

“It hurts? Oh let me just empty the rest in there and it’ll be over.”

Mission accomplished. I was no longer focused on my groin but now on the golf ball-sized bulge in my shoulder from the injection. And it burned.

“Everything ok?”, the doctor asked.

“Um, it burns pretty bad.”

“Nurse, how much did you inject?” he inquired after seeing the massive swelling.

“16 CCs,” she replied.

“You were supposed to do that in two 8CC shots — not all at once!” he snapped.

She rubbed my shoulder to try and alleviate the pain to no avail. Shortly thereafter I felt a tugging down below. Now, I’ve never had to provide milk to a cub, but I’m guessing this is how mama bear feels when hers is pawing around for a drink. Except this mama has balls and there ain’t no milk down there.

The doctor talked me through the procedure, which was mildly comforting given all of the cutting, digging, pulling, searching, bleeding, snipping and “locals” going on. After an hour or so of “let’s find the marbles in the oatmeal”, I was convinced that my newly concocted Frankenballs would be forever scarred and useless.

The surgery finally ended and once I was cleaned up they gave me the worst turkey sandwich and coffee I’ve ever had and prescribed me Vicodin. Now, I’ve never been to a methadone clinic but I’m guessing this is pretty much a similar experience except that I got the good drugs that don’t make your teeth fall out. Laugh Mom picked me up, took me home, got my script filled and gave me a bag of frozen peas to help reduce the swelling.

It was a Friday, so I took the day off from work and sat on the couch in a Vicodin haze until I fell asleep. A few hours later I woke up and began a serious regimen of playing XBox and exchanging various less frozen vegetables for those that were more frozen to ice my wound. I started feeling ok and decided to get up and head to the bathroom to finally check out the damage. The stitch – as in one, singular stitch – was tiny. And the thought of having horribly disfigured junk was nothing like how I’d made it out to be in my head. Much like the rest of my life, yet an unconventional ordeal yielded a totally normal result.

I headed back down to the couch and Laugh Mom started getting dinner ready. She asked the family which vegetable we’d like with our dinner, to which we all replied “the one that hasn’t been on Dad’s nuts.”

You can read more unconventionally gross stories from Dave over on Every Other Thursday.