Whole countries have tried to control births. They wiped out from under themselves a whole generation of future tax payers that would keep their own government intact, serious repercussions. Then they reversed that in favor of washing down river, future females…they now have too many males with no partners, what can you do with that?

You think of these things when you practice this on a small scale. These man-made solutions are dicey.

Looking back, after the fog settles you better understand the frailty of human errors.

It still rings in my head, ”You can’t be…I assisted in that operation.” They tried to blame it on me after two failed vasectomies.

Hindsight helps one to better understand… The doctor’s wife had run off with a tennis player from La Jolla, keeping in mind this is golf country adds insult to injury.  His assistant Miss ”You can’t be, I assisted in that operation” stepped in and consoled him and got pregnant herself.  You can’t blame him for losing confidence in his own practice.

I learned to breathe with my head in a sack, I had three more babies at home.

That’s probably why my beautiful sisters-in-law decided not have children.  Instead they drove around in convertibles and cars with fins.  Their hair blew in the California wind.  They dressed in bathing suits under minks as they traversed the highway to Hollywood fun.

They had matched shoes and purses, matched luggage, tickets to travel on airplanes with propellers to vacation spots where they had cocktails before dinner. They had houses made of adobe with low windows that looked out over swimming pools among the lemon groves, and a 12 inch televisions!

Today my beautiful sisters-in-law are both in a rest home, they have no comforter or anyone to hold their hands, they weep.

This week I was invited to meet the second generation of one of my failed vasectomies; a ten pound great-grandson who looked me in the eye. I like him. He comes with history.

At my table recently one of my sons asked me why, when I pinned up his school pictures I always put the pin in his head. Another recently came out with the truth, why he cut the cats whiskers off. That’s how he learned to cut off his own eyebrows and eyelashes. That motor driven thing they made out of the neighbor’s trash came up in the conversation.  They reminded me what I said, “I wouldn’t come to the rest home and wipe slobber off their chins or push them in wheelchairs.”

They talked about the value of cameras and how they stop crime then went on to talk about us. We’d still be in jail if they had cameras when I drove over all those gravestones when we got lost in the fog.

I blame this on not getting enough air when I lived with the sack over my head managing life’s verities.  I like failed vasectomies. They to have to put up with me now.