Dangly Bits

Jason:

O.K., here’s a story for you. I feel most sorry for that dog. Criticism of an award-winning children’s book over the word “scrotum” has brought Susan Patron’s “The Higher Power of Lucky” into the top 40 on Amazon.com. [It’s] the story of a 10-year-old girl in rural California and her quest for “Higher Power.” The opening chapter includes a passage about a man “who had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked ’62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.” Librarians have been debating whether “scrotum” was an appropriate word for young readers, especially from a book with the Newbery seal.

O.:

I heard about this on The Daily Show the other night and Jon Stewart said knowing that “scrotum” was in the book would get thousands of kids reading just to get to that part...that in fact, if you wanted kids to read, you’d put “boobs” on every fifth page.

Jason:

Yeah! Let ’em read! My response to tizzies like these is: seriously, were these disgruntled people ever children? Kids know the lingo and they’ve seen the pictures. They have the internet, dammit. Their knowledge is rarely 100% accurate but kids of a certain age are hyperaware of the world at large, its pleasures and perversions. Didn’t these librarians ever do that thing where you sandwich your hands together, link them with your friend’s sandwiched hands held perpendicular to yours, then one of you opens his hands and it sort of looks like a vagina in there?

O.:

F. used to do that and take pictures of it with his cellphone.

Jason:

I’m glad you know what I’m talking about. It’s one of those things that’s easy to do but tough to describe. Like, um, riding a bicycle.