Time as measured by...

It’s December 2024, and I just found out that the son of my parents' friends died. The pictures posted on social media made him look much older than he was, and perhaps saddled with Alzheimer’s or dementia. His face was gaunt, his gaze not entirely collected.

My memory recalls him as the oldest of a tribe of five or six kids, and the bad boy of the bunch. Wiry, dark haired, and rascally, with a fondness for a leaf which was then illegal, and a propensity for trouble. I didn’t know him well. He was older than me, and I younger enough to be unworthy of his attention.

His death would have been merely a fleeting observation if not for one thing: 

His balls were the first I ever saw.

It was at the Horse Traders Convention in the tiny town of Almond, NY, probably around 1976. (Now don't get the wrong idea. We aren't talking some fancy Connecticut-style event with posh equestrians strutting around in polo shirts and gleaming riding boots. This was a gritty event with smoky campfires, banjo music, and horse pulls. We were in Northern Appalachia, and it showed.)

The kid didn’t mean to display his goods, or at least, I don’t think he did. He was merely leaning back in one of those 60’s era folding lawn chair made of aluminum poles and plastic webbing, his legs sticking out from the frayed edges of cutoff jean shorts.

 (We didn’t know to call them jorts back then.) 

And since he was skinny, the legs of the shorts were loose. 

Quite loose. 

And the cut of the shorts was short. 

Quite short. 

We didn’t know to call it manspreading then either, but his position offered passers by—in this case me—an eyeful of something lurking within, unrestrained by undergarments. Something odd and ungainly, of a hue which didn’t seem earthly. It/they were unlike any body part I’d previously seen. Or imagined.

I’m not sure where his penis was hiding at the time, though to this day, I thank it for that small kindness. 

It feels strange realizing that the first pair of testicles I ever saw no longer bobbles around the earth, in youthful ignorance and freedom. 

The passage of time can be measured in so many things. The age of our children and grandchildren. The lines on our faces. The creaking of our bones. But who could have guessed that time could be measured by the deaths of people who prompt genital memories?

Rest in peace, Robbie. 

Want to learn more about the Horse Traders Convention? Here you go.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/24/archives/all-horse-traders-shun-being-no2.html