Peter Krupa

A bunch of school-marms (seriously) are up in arms over an award-winning children’s book that contains the word “scrotum.” The offending passage is found in a book called “The High Power of Lucky,” reports the New York Times:

The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

First of all, I want to say that no one ever, ever, in any circumstances, deserves to get bitten on the scrotum by a rattlesnake. Not even a dog. Now, on to the controversy. As is often the case with these kinds of things, partisans are forced to choose between two equally ridiculous positions: The position of the prudes, who claim the use of the word is “Howard Stern-like;” and the position of the author, who says that since the main character is learning about how to be a grown-up, “Learning about language and body parts … is very important to her.”

Right. Body parts. Elbow. Ear lobe. Heart. Nose. Scrotum.

Of course, as the title of this post suggests, “scrotum” is clearly a funny word, especially if you have a juvenile sense of humor. Scrotum. See? You kind of chuckled there. Part of the reason it’s funny, though, is because you’re not really supposed to say it in polite company. You can’t just walk up to the mail man and say, “My scrotum itches,” can you?

This, you see, is the real value of taboos: They give us something to giggle about when we get to middle school. Take away all the taboos and “scrotum” becomes just a medical term. That’s why I say, ban the book. Shelter the children. Cover their ears. Then when they’re all growns up, they can have a good hearty laugh when some frat boy staples his scrotum to a wooden chair.

No rattlesnakes though. Rattlesnakes are not funny.