A Coincidence of Testicles
by
Floyd Waterson
So, I was reading the newspaper the other day, the first time in weeks I’ve
read the paper from front to back and came across a cosmic coincidence that is giving rise
to either a whole new theory of history or of chaotic cosmology, or, heaven forbid, both.
Granted, daily rag reading has been a chore in recent times what with no sports to read
about (damn NBA), politics reduced to a nattering monetary wins all bore and no world wide
ideological battles to distract.
But boy was I wrong. Found amongst the insignificant, the banal, the everyday pap
covered in our record of the day’s events was a bodily nugget that shakes the way one
looks at the world. It all started in the op-ed section in a column about a new book on
Hitler. The book, "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil,"
surveys the changing explanations given over the years for Hitler’s evil. As our
society and culture changed so too have our rationalizations for why a single man would
wreak so much havoc on the world. The book—and column—describe one such
explanation posited for Hitler’s behavior was that the great dictator was missing one
testicle. The column did not say how the theorizer used the missing testicle to explain
why a person would murder six million people. Nonetheless, at one point in post-war
history, the absence of a testicle was used to explain a man’s actions and the
ensuing consequences for the world.
Perhaps 15 minutes later I had made my way to the lifestyle section where I settled
into a book review of the new biography of Thurgood Marshall by Juan Williams. The book
claims that the Supreme Court Justice is really our greatest civil rights hero. Marshall
fought a persistent battle in the courts to secure rights for blacks. Battles which, the
book asserts, did far more for blacks than the achievements of Martin Luther King and
others. But, the book review and book notes that Marshall was not born a great man. In his
early years he was quite the partyer. After college he continued his wild, care-free ways
until he was in a terrible car accident. As a result of the wreck, Marshal lost...his left
testicle!
Amazed and dumbfounded, I set the newspaper down. What are the odds that two articles in
the same newspaper on the same day in two different sections would contain articles about
two men of history--men of completely different character, destiny and
consequence--discussing the impact of missing their left testicle? Oliver Stone or Art
Bell disciples would presumably postulate that some overarching editor at the
paper with some mysterious grand testicle conspiracy was behind it all. But what can the
rationalist make of all this? First, what of the testicles themselves? Why would one man
missing a left testicle kill six million Jews while another with the same absence would
secure basic freedoms for an entire race. Perhaps, with the walls of privacy torn asunder
around our leaders, we should demand an accounting as to the existence of left testicles
of all those seeking high office.
But what of prominent women of history? Where do they fit into all of this? Mary Queen of
Scots? Catherine the Great? Golda Meier? Perhaps a grant should be issued to a
distinguished historian to delve into the significance of testicles (or lack thereof) in
history.
But the more important question is not one merely of gonads but of the coincidence of
testicles. We must return to the perplexing central question of how, of why, they appear
in relation to their impact on two disparate men in two articles in a single newspaper on
the very same day. The very day that I happen to read the newspaper cover to cover. Does
it speak to some controlled chaos we do not yet understand? Does it help explain why World
War I was triggered when two assassins took a wrong turn down a road in Vienna, stumbling
upon their prey--Archduke Ferdinand—whom they missed killing earlier in the day? Such
a wrong turn lead to 16 million killed over four years. Or maybe it helps explain why a
lone gunman in Dallas is responsible for the assassination of a President rather than an
organized conspiracy of mobsters or spies or Cubans. It is difficult for us to fathom that
such carnage and tragedy could be triggered by mere coincidences, random sets of events
strung together. However, testicles may tell us this is true, or it may tell us otherwise.
It may explain the very essence of our lives, whether our events are random or planned,
whether we are merely flotsam and jetsam or have some grip on the rudder.
Chaos theory tells us that when a frog sneezes in Africa it affects the weather in Austin.
What does the coincidence of testicles tell us? |
