That day a group of us about the same age were skinny dipping in a local creek. Included in the group were me, three cousins (two brothers and a third one from a different family), and another lad our age. I noticed that one of my cousins and the other boy's penises looked different from the two brothers and mine. Where ours had the glans exposed the others had theirs covered with folds of skin. I knew nothing about circumcision at the time, so I was puzzled. Fortunately I am inquisitive by nature and not at all shy, so I asked about the differences. The other boy explained that when we were born, all of us had this skin and that ours had been cut off by a doctor when we were babies. He knew this because he had a younger brother who had been circumcised. He had no answer for our questions concerning why our skin had been removed and why his brother was circumcised and he wasn't. That seemed to satisfy our curiosity and we went back to enjoying the day.

My inquisitive streak kept the issue alive in my mind. I finally got up the courage to ask my father and he explained that it was done for cleanliness and that it helped prevent infections and other problems later in life. That wasn't enough for me because I was curious why, if this was such a good thing, why wasn't everybody circumcised, like we were all given shots and vaccinations to protect us from diseases? He had no answer for this. Approximately 2 years later, my uncircumcised cousin went into a hospital for a day for "some tests" and a week or so later made it a point to show me his newly circumcised penis.

When I entered high school, I had my first exposure to showering with other boys and as I looked around I noticed that about 3/4 of them were circumcised. Again the question of why the rest weren't came to mind. Perhaps it was cost since most of the uncircumcised boys seemed to come from the poorer families, most but not all. I wondered how they urinated through all that extra skin and what happened when they became erect. I was masturbating on a daily basis then and that led me to speculate about the effect of the foreskin on ejaculation. I went directly to my best source. I arranged to be alone with the boy I mentioned earlier and asked him. He told me that he was able to pull his foreskin back when he "peed," and that the skin retracted almost fully behind his glans when he had an erection and that when he masturbated he was able to move the skin up and down the shaft so that the glans was fully exposed for much of the procedure. His ejaculate was unimpeded when he did that. We were completely alone in the house so we decided to give each other a demonstration of our different techniques.

After that was done, he confided to me that he wished that his parents had had him circumcised like they did his brother. He complained about the smell and the "stuff" that often built up at the end of a day, notably in the warm weather. He also complained about itching and discomfort. He kept telling me how lucky I was to not have to bother with a foreskin and I agreed with him. He moved to another town shortly after that and I've lost touch with him but before he left he told me that when he got to be 18 he was going to have his circumcision.

I thought little more about circumcisions for years after that. I was and am proud and happy that my parents decided to have that done for me, but it wasn't any big issue until the birth of my son. As my wife was being taken into the delivery room, I was presented with a sheaf of papers to sign, one being the permission for circumcision should the child be a boy. The no-circ hysteria was beginning to build and my wife and I hadn't discussed the matter. However I couldn't imagine subjecting my newborn, if it was a boy, to the discomfort that I had heard about uncircumcised men regardless of the propaganda being put out by the no-circ crowd.

My son is married now and when his wife was pregnant with his first, they were undecided on the matter. At the time there were few sources available to counter the ravings of the no-circs. Like all new parents to be they wanted only the best for the child. Finally in the end my son came to me for advice. I didn't have any wealth of po-circ information to give him, but we talked openly about it. He ended the discussion with, "If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me."