This happened a long time ago so I can't remember who came up with the idea but when my friend Margaret was hosting a monthly card game night for a small group of her friends all of whom had husbands who had undergone a vasectomy in the year previous, the plan was hatched to poke a little fun at them. My friend's husband had endured the procedure just a few weeks prior to this party and she felt he had recovered enough that he would enjoy a good laugh about it.
I immediately set to work making up membership cards to the Clip It Club with the idea that I would arrive at the door looking for recruitments to join a support group for men. I was at my creative zenith as I made up flyers (all this in the day before home computers) offering discounts on life size replicas of the needle used, and a video of the actual procedure. "Don't just tell your friends, SHOW THEM" was the tagline. I even made up an acrostic poem.
V is for vasectomy, that is what you had.
A is for the agony, boy did it feel bad.
That's all I can remember of the poem but you can imagine that the rest was pretty funny.
At the appointed time, I packed up all the flyers, hopped into my car and drove to my friends house with a huge grin on my face. This stuff was funny and I knew it. If it got into the right hands I would soon be writing for SNL. I bounced out of the car and flew up to the front door and delivered a sharp knock. My friend answered the door and I made my grand entrance announcing loudly that I was looking for some men to join the Clip It Club. I launched into my spiel reciting my poem and handing out the flyers and membership cards I had painstakingly made. My enthusiasm began to wane rapidly though when I realized that I was being greeted with stony silence instead of the expected rolling on the floor laughter. I grabbed a carrot stick from the vegetable tray sitting on the table and mumbled something about having to get home then made a very hasty retreat back out the door.
I called my friend the next day to see what had gone so terribly wrong. She told me that she and one of the other women had thought it was the funniest thing they'd heard but because no one else even cracked a smile they thought it best to follow suit. I complained to her about how embarrassed I had felt but I got no sympathy. "You were embarrassed? she said "I had to sit there the entire night with them." Point taken.
I guess men who have recently had "that" operation can be a bit short and snippy.
