Vagal Reflex (circa 1994)

I enter entered the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars
Reception Hall on Sumner Avenue
in Allentown Pennsylvania
for the 1994 annual Christmas Party
and hang my jacket.
 
Cousin Cindy and her three  year old son
Brandon with bright red hair,
walk through the entry doors. 
He would be my second cousin.
 
I bend over to introduce myself to Brandon
who has never met me,
and who has been taking karate classes
and learning about “stranger danger.” 
Faster than I can blink my eyes, 
he socks  me in the scrotum
with his karate fist punch.
 
I feel pain in my groin area
and my stomach immediately feels nauseated.  
The blow to my scrotum sack,
full of tender-spongy-fleshy-testes
sends a message through the nerves
to my brain back down to my stomach.
This kid’s teacher must be Bruce Lee.
 
It is worse than an ice cream head ache, 
because the pain from
the kick,
punch,
or baseball
into the nuts lasts longer.
 
The pain is the combination
of getting the wind knocked out
from a football tackle,
or a kick ball kicked straight to the stomach, 
AND of a dentist sticking his sharp hooked metal probe
into the nerve of a bad tooth.
 
During turkey season 12 years later,
I want to slather a dap of  Icy Hot
in Brandon’s underwear
while he takes a shower but I don’t; 
he was just a kid at the time of
the Karate Kid Uppercut to “the boys.”
 
I am glad I don’t give child birth.