It was August of 1988, and I was attending my nephew Brett’s 4th birthday party in Leoni, Michigan. I was just planning on spending a wonderful summer day with my family, but little did I know its events would change my life forever. While teaching Brett how to swing the yellow wiffle bat I had purchased him, he accidentally hit me in the testicles, causing me to clutch at my groin and collapse onto the freshly mown lawn behind my brother Andy’s house.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, fast forward 15 months, and there I was sitting in the studio audience for “America’s Funniest Home Videos” as the moment of my ultimate shame captured by Andy on his Sharp VHS-C HQ camcorder was replayed for millions of people. The audience guffawed as the most traumatic experience of my life was dubbed with hackneyed cartoon sound effects coupled with Bob Saget’s appalling impersonation of Brett’s voice. I ended up winning the $10,000 prize, but to say it wasn’t worth it is an understatement.
A ruptured left testicle requires the placement of a plastic scrotal tube to drain excess fluid. Six months of agonizing physical therapy costing thousands of dollars. Still more thousands of dollars in lost wages from my job as a construction foreman. These are the tolls the incident cost me for which the $10,000 was paltry and insulting recompense. I like to think the audience would not have laughed so heartily had these facts been known, but to be honest, the whole ordeal damaged my faith in humanity almost as much as it did my testicle.
Moreover, my relationship with my beloved nephew was completely shattered, and truly has never fully recovered. 36 years later, and I still instinctively cower in fear with my hands covering my genitals every time I see him. Worse yet, my family hasn’t grasped the emotional damage I incurred at the party, and will intermittently replay the clip on YouTube as I force a pained smile while biting back tears. No grand prize could possibly be worth such torment.
So go ahead and laugh, America, as you drink from my seemingly endless supply of misery. You’ve been doing it for the past three decades, so I hardly expect you to discover you’ve had your fill anytime soon. Just know that your spirit and sense of humanity have fallen in much the same way I did after being struck with the wiffle bat on that cursed afternoon so many years ago.