The Best Thing About Taking My Young Kids to the Pool Is Having My Balls Repeatedly Crushed By Their Feet

Ah, summer. The lazy days, the warm breezes, the crushed testicles. There’s nothing quite like unwinding after a long day in a swimming pool with that mellow, full body tingle you can only get from having your gonads savagely wrecked by a careless child’s flailing legs.

When I get home from work, my kids already have their towels out and swim suits on, eager to start the pool season off right with some serious ball blasting. I chuckle and hold my stomach as it involuntarily clenches itself into a tight pretzel knot in anticipation of the full scale onslaught that’s about to be unleashed on my tender nether regions.

The second we jump into the water, each child becomes a super-powered whirling dervish hellbent on the total annihilation of my genitalia. If I give a kid tips on their swim form, I’ll get an erratic foot crammed into my junk. When I sneak up to splash one of them from behind, it’s a sure bet they’ll suddenly pirouette around and thrust out their bony heels to shred my scrote six ways from Sunday. If I try to help one kid float on their back—WATCH OUT!—here comes the other kid to pummel my beanbag with their hilarious “high knees” dance routine. They love to cling to me in an inescapable death grip and howl with glee while my poor pulverized privates are demolished beyond salvation. The anguished faces I make only encourage them; they cackle like deranged geese because daddy’s voice goes up an octave as they eliminate the potential for more family from my family jewels.

What’s that—the water is lava? Better race up the ladder to higher ground, kids! It’s my duty as a responsible parent to take up the rear and have my plums pounded and sack squished while you all make it to safety.

During the final adult swim of the evening, I finally get to bask in some well deserved me-time. I’ll take a deep breath, close my eyes, and float face down in the water until the lifeguards poke me with that telescoping cleaning pole to tell me the pool closed five minutes ago and could I please restrain my children who are running amok in the parking lot banging on cars with pool noodles they swiped from a storage bin.

Ok, settle down, kids. Daddy just needs a moment to towel off and rest his aching, mangled cojones before he can hobble to the car without whimpering and feeling dizzy.

Togetherness is so vitally important, and the endearing summer memories I forge with my kids are built upon the wasted ruins of my shattered nards.