‘V’ IS FOR VASECTOMY – Living Retired #148
‘V’ IS FOR VASECTOMY
Flashback…
Remember your family summer road trips when you were a kid?
The highlight came from the front drivers seat. Dads would damn near choke on their pipes when they slammed their foot on the brake and screamed: “Look! If you kids don’t stop acting up I’ll turn this car around RIGHT NOW and we’ll go home!”
This always solicited a response from Moms: “Settle down dear. You know we wouldn’t do such a thing.”
This of course led to an augment between your parents; followed by complete silence in the front seat for the next hundred miles.
Fast forward to a month ago…
Jan and I took a road trip to Florida to visit two couples who rented a condo– you know one of those places the owners can charge a boatload of money because it’s on the ocean; and it shows well online.
Sadly, as it turned out, our friends were there for the entire month of March– which was about long enough for the two husbands to become, well, let’s call it, alcoholic dependant! This terrible outcome resulted because each time their wives shopped at Bealls Department Store, the guys slipped into the nearby Total Wine & More outlet.
Total Wine & More stores are the size of Disney World– but without dads walking around until midnight carrying their kids on their shoulders. But, unlike Disney, at Total Wine & More you don’t have to walk through a Gift Shop to get out. The whole store is a Gift Shop!
Our road trip continued. Driving along I-4 near Orlando we were overcome with a medical condition known as BS: billboard signs. These billboards contribute to distracted driving: listening to tunes on the radio, talking on your cellphone and texting to your wife in the next seat– a guy has to pay attention to read the billboards!
And then it happened!
A massive billboard– as big as the lineup at Disney’s Splash Mountain– stood out; so to speak…
The billboard included a photograph of a doctor; the copy screamed:
VASECTOMIES
NO SCALPEL, NO NEEDLE
30,000 COMPLETED
Jan didn’t say anything.
Me? My legs squeezed together as my grip on the steering wheel tightened. I did what any middle-age man would do: I had a flashback… to a bag of Green Giant Frozen Niblets!
30,000 vasectomies! I needed to know more about this human population control factory. I googled: vasectomy madman.
You know what? You have to hand it to him– NO NOT THAT!– but according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation this guy is the real deal. Who’d have thought: there are trained people whose job title is ‘vasectomy counter.’
An hour north of Orlando we arrive at our destination. It’s a phenomenon called ‘The Villages.’
‘The Villages’ is, well, think ‘Disney for Retirees.’ But without the Gift Shops!
100,000 people live in The Villages; everybody drives golf carts. But unlike golfers criss-crossing fairways, swearing trying to find their ball, residents of The Villages are happy. Either they’ve been to Total Wine & More or driving golf carts means they they don’t worry about losing their drivers license when their eyesight goes!
Question: Residents of The Villages are over 55. Whose getting vasectomies there?
