Chapter 9: Hey, Neighbor, You're Hung Like A "My Little Pony"!

Did you know that we all have penises? All of us -- me, you, your Great Aunt Hazel, every human being that ever walked the earth -- is or was endowed with a Johnson of some sort. I know it must be true, because Ambrosia said so.

I love that Ambrosia can't splurge on some dental work but instead has one of those 2,047-channel cable packages and is forever honing her mind with programs like "Inside the Real ER," "Forensic Files," and "Neonatal 911." It seems that at least once every week she has to recount for me some horrid tidbit she caught while watching cable TV at 11 p.m. with three-year-old Meddow. One recent claim is that we all have penises. Yes, yes, I know that in our first few months in the womb, all that good stuff that eventually becomes Our Stuff is just a glob of ambivalent stuff. I realize that, anatomically speaking, we're nothing but a bunch of Pats, Lees, and Chrisses until -- but only until -- our third month in utero. The exception would be those unlucky folks that Ambrosia variously refers to as "homophites," "hemadites," or "frododites" (basically anything ending in -ites will do it for her).

Sounds like some cable program tried to dumb down the whole sexual development thing enough that people up eating Cheetos and drinking Tequila Rose at 11 p.m. won't get confused and turn their attention instead to some 24-hour wrestling channel, or their bong. I know the program probably had lots of nifty cartoon images of the once-ambivalent stuff taking shape -- sacks dropping or turning inside out, skin churning and plumping with fat into folds, little teardrop-shaped blobs growing or shrinking this way and that. And then it probably explained that the clitoris is, technically speaking, a penis that never came to pass. But I think Ambrosia took this the wrong way, because she has not stopped talking about it for a couple of weeks now. She really believes that the clitoris is a penis, and has been telling everyone she knows that they have a penis. "You!" she says, shaking a finger at me, "You've got one! I've got one! Meddow's got one!" (I'm getting the idea, but she won't stop building her case, so craftily building her case.)

As if it weren't bad enough to tell me I had wee boobies a couple weeks back (see Chapter 5), I guess she's now telling me I've got a small penis, too?