In Canada, or in Ontario at least, you have to wait a year after the birth of a child to get a vasectomy, in case you want to chop your balls off just because you hate your baby. Up here, a vasectomy is free, but reversing a vasectomy is not. So they want you to be of sound mind.

The day Sammy turned one, I celebrated by going to see Ottawa’s famed Dr. Weiss, he of the no-needle, no-scalpel vasectomy. “Weiss, as in slice,” he said by way of greeting. At the time—12 years ago—he’d done 25,000 vasectomies. I was in good if slightly chilly hands.

During our first appointment, I was given my “vasectomy kit.” It consisted of a jock strap, a plastic disposable razor that the Bic company discarded as “too basic,” a single valium, and a brochure that explained how I was to present myself at my next appointment—my surgery.

I wish I’d kept that brochure. You know how a no-parking sign has a red circle with a slash through a car? There was a drawing of a man’s junk with hair on the peen. Big red slash. Another with hair on the balls. Big red slash. A little bit of hair everywhere. Big red slash.

There was only one green circle, and those man parts were HAIRLESS. So, the morning of my surgery, job one: Shave my bits. Now, while I’ve always kept my regions more 1980s than 1970s—it’s just polite—I had never taken a blade to my funyuns. Friends, I was shaking.

I got in the shower and couldn’t figure out how to make my ballsack… firm… or… flat… enough to shave it. And this is not to brag, because my balls are awful, but: I had considerable acreage to clear. I felt like that Ingalls girl in the grass in Little House on the Prairie.

I saw my dad’s balls once—they dropped out of his swimmers on a hot day—and they looked like a Crown Royal bag. Well, balls are genetic. If you can picture two lemons jangling inside an elephant-skin tote, you know what I was up against—and why no woman is “a ball woman.”

My poor, innocent boys—my actual sons, not my testicles—have inherited the same affliction. I’m pretty sure the men in our family were the inspiration for the aliens in Mars Attacks!

Anyway, 45 minutes later, I was shaved clean from my belly button to my knees. My ballsack looked like a turkey before you put it in the oven. Like I’d stood too close to a campfire. I looked ridiculous. But I sure wasn’t going to get sent home for incomplete hair removal.

Next I took my valium, which relaxed my balls along with everything else. Now I looked like I was trying to smuggle a freshly shorn coconut onto an airplane. Because I was doped, I needed someone to take me to my surgery. For reasons too complicated to explain, I called my mum.

Dr. Weiss’s office was in a home, on a residential street. Next door, two old ladies sat in chairs, hectoring men on their way in, like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppets. I had to do a weird walk of shame past them, hollering at me. I half-expected them to throw rotten fruit.

I’ll fast-forward through the surgery itself: Dr. Weiss tied a rope to my peen, and tied the rope to something over my head. Then he shot my balls with an air gun to numb them. A little poke, a little snip, a little sizzle, a little glue. Done. It took minutes to geld me.

I’d done some math to pass the time. 25,000 vasectomies. Say four (flaccid) inches a customer. That’s 100,000 inches. “Doc,” I said. “You’ve seen nearly two miles of dong.” Dr. Weiss stared into the void of his paths not taken, nodded, and wordlessly untied both ends of the rope.

Now I had to return to the world’s quietest waiting room to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out. They gave me a can of Coke to sit and drink. With my mum. “So,” I said. “How are things?” “Fine,” she said. “And you?” “Oh, fine,” I said, sipping my Coke. “Thank you for asking.”

Finally, we could go. Back out past the hooting old ladies. Long, mostly silent drive home. Put on my jock strap for support. Remembered not to lift anything heavy, apart from my vaguely throbbing nuts. And that was it. No more babies.

But I did get MUCH better at shaving my balls.