"So you HAVE been 'Swabbed'!"

My little brother is in town on business. I say little brother only in reference to his age. He is four inches my superior (in height only!) and outweighs me by at least 30 pounds. He lives in Seattle with his wife, son and brand new baby daughter who, incidentally, has blue eyes. Little Bro has brown eyes and a degree in genetics from the University of Wisconsin. Anyone with a degree in genetics knows that brown eyes are a dominant trait. Meaning that if a blue-eyed woman and a brown-eyed man have, say, a daughter, she should have brown eyes, because his trait would dominate the blue eye trait. I like to remind him that I possess green eyes, which is a recessive trait relative to blue eyes. He doesn't see the same intrigue that I do on this point.

As I said, Little Bro just had a daughter, about 3 months ago. He and my Little Sis-in-law have had a little trouble having kids. Nothing major was wrong (clearly nothing major since they now have 2 kids au naturale) but he had to go get "tested" to make sure his guns were, indeed, a'blazin'. He was at my house last night and, over a few homebrews, we began discussing exactly what his battery of "tests" included.

Fertility testing is utterly humiliating. I do not have children, nor do I have a searing desire to procreate. Should I, in the future, feel the need to bear fruit, I will simply let nature take her course rather than stand behind a strong, hot spot-light and interrogate our fine Mother Nature as to what the whole hang-up is. One of the more graphic tests Little Bro described to me was a procedure designed to rule out any sexually transmitted diseases that may be the root of any obstacle to his fecundity. It was this test that he euphemistically referred to as "The Swab".

He didn't need to describe what "The Swab" entailed. I think anyone who has ever watched a civil war reenactment, where filthy men pack muskets, can imagine well enough what "The Swab" is like.

Little Bro asked me if I had ever been "Swabbed".

"No, never"
"You've never been 'Swabbed'. Even in college, where they routinely check for STD's?"
"Never, I've never been 'Swabbed'. I'm not even 100% sure what that means."
"Don't give me that, you know exactly what that means."
"Well, I have an idea what it means, but if you're asking me if I am completely and unwaveringly sure about what it means, I don't"
"OK, so you don't know what it means. Fine. Then why did you cringe when I told you I had gotten 'Swabbed' as part of the tests I had run?"
"Well, I just thought about how it must feel to have that wad of dry, coarse cotton pushed up the length of your urethra, and it gave me those body chills where you can't help but shudder"
"Ah-Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! So you HAVE been 'Swabbed'!"

Despite the fact that Little Bro would probably feel more at ease with his own body should he have someone who could identify with his "Swabbing" trauma, I could not afford him any empathy. Though I wish I could commiserate, I have not had the grave misfortune of being "swabbed".


There are a lot of people quitting at the company I work for. My boss has not made a general announcement that I am leaving the company yet, so there are still a few pockets of folks who are surprised to hear it. From those that do know I am leaving soon, I am getting the inevitable "short-timer" comments. Additionally, I have noticed a slight change in attitude among those that I interact with at work. Put more explicitly, there is a thinly-veiled hostility I perceive from my coworkers. It's nothing overt, and there is nothing concrete I can point to, but still, I can tell that people at work are now treating me differently in my last few days than they did when I was a regular worker bee trapped as they are now. For example, tonight I walked out of the building almost in-step with Tiny Asian Girl, who is normally very friendly with me and is often chatty to the point of annoyance. Not tonight though, she walked near me with the casual distance shared by strangers in a long elevator ascent. Her desire to avoid conversation was as perceptible to me as were her usual ramblings about her church group and her soft-spoken, effeminate boyfriend.

I'll bet this same attitude presents itself in prisoners who learn of another's plan to escape. It's not that the non-escaping prisoner wishes the other to be incarcerated any longer than is necessary. Rather, the left-behind prisoner just wants the other's incarceration to be as long or slightly longer than the one he himself must endure. I guess it's human nature to want to share your misery with others afflicted by similar circumstances. Perhaps it's the escapee that reminds the incarcerated of their own lack of ambition or self-reliance to escape the crap-hole their life has become.

I'm probably wrong though, I usually am. My logical hemisphere says that the other half of my brain is imagining all this and no one is acting differently now. It is just my own perception that is skewed given the abrupt change my life is about to take.

OK, I'm waxing too philosophic for a Wednesday night (read: this is getting boring).

Maybe there are some Q-tips in the bathroom that I can use to explore the forbidden ecstasy that comes with a "Swabbing".