The Legend of Lefty

My newest and biggest ambition in life was to build my family and have children; my wife swapped out the word ambition for reality, and it became our number one goal to have children and raise them together. We started trying almost immediately after we got married and month after month with no success, we were disappointed. It had only been four months and everyone around us was telling us not to worry, but my wife’s impatience had reached her threshold. Not because she had unrealistic expectations, but because of a combination of her truly being an inherently impatient woman (love you babe), and her concern after having been informed of the story of Lefty.

Lefty’s struggle started as a very young child with an undescended left testicle which required and underwent correction. Unfortunately, this correction led to problems later in life.

At 18 I had been dry-humping my then girlfriend in the living room when my left testicle really started to hurt and swell. Being a concerned 18 year old thinking my nut was about to fall off, I immediately went to the hospital to get it checked out. When there, they diagnosed me with testicular torsion (basically a twisting of the testicle inside the scrotum). This apparently was a medical emergency so they decided to send me by ambulance to a hospital in Edmonton and to my horror, since my girlfriend was a member of the Students Against Drinking and Driving program, she knew the EMTs that would be completing the transfer. Lovely.

That portion of the story ended quite anticlimactically with me being discharged from the hospital once the swelling receded without any further care required - subsequent to lifting my hospital gown for countless doctors and nurses, and being asked loudly "has your left testicle always been much bigger than your right testicle?" while my girlfriend and my brother burst out laughing just outside the curtain.

At 21 I accepted a job in Canmore, Alberta, but it was short lived because after 3 days in my new position, Lefty swelled to the size of a grapefruit during a short visit from some close friends. For some reason, at that time in my life, that was a sign the job in Canmore wasn't for me and I left the next day...riding my motorcycle...through a snowstorm...with my grapefruit sized gonad. I made it as far as Olds before I abandoned my bike and hitched a ride in the back seat of a friend's car.

I got home on fumes, walking as though I was straddling a horse and wasted no time in attending the emergency room at the local hospital. They said it was an infection, booked me for an ultrasound to confirm and sent me on my way with my antibiotics. After two days of icing my junk I'd had enough. I went to a hospital in Edmonton where the doctor prescribed me some additional antibiotics as well as a bottle of Percocet. Those helped with the pain immensely and after a brief dinner and the shedding of some seemingly not-so-important inhibitions, I arrived at the tattoo shop with two of my friends.

My dear friend O is the one who coined the nickname Lefty. She thought my plight was hilarious and insisted that I commemorate such an incredible story by getting a tattoo.

So yes, as you can see, I had the name Lefty tattooed on my bottom lip by a long haired Australian artist who convinced me the font (which looks like a 5 year old wrote it) looked "badass".

And so ends the Legend of Lefty and begins the story of Lefty the Hopeful Dad.