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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   32435 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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I keep getting accidentally kicked in the balls by my child. It hurts, alright, but it's nowhere near the most painful thing I endure for the kid's sake.

Frankly, I keep getting kicked, smacked and elbowed in absolutely all my bodily parts. I think that's normal. Right? It's normal for every day to be an MMA cage fight against a little monkey.

Right? It's normal for every day to be an MMA cage fight against a little monkey.

Certainly with my boys it was. Though they were more into wrestling and elbows off the top rope AKA bunk bed. Ohhhh yeaaah! I certainly got a few black eyes and knees/kicks, to the groin over the years, sometimes while trying to catch them while they leapt off something high, without considering the consequences.

It hurts, alright, but it's nowhere near the most painful thing I endure for the kid's sake.

I genuinely have no idea how that can be the case. Getting hit in the balls is the most painful thing I've ever experienced, bar none. Even if you find it to be worth it, what the heck is more painful?

I've spent more time on the floor praying for mercy from heartburn and constipation. Toe-stubbing is worse than ball busting, IMO, although it's easier to stay upright afterward.

Getting hit in the balls is like 30s of ache. Gut stuff is Hell.

Carrying the kid on my shoulders over several kilometers while both my knees have already given out, for one.

Being thoroughly struck by hayfever, my head one mess of snot and aches, dead tired from the antihistamines, and still spending the whole day outdoors because I can't stand to see said little monkey cooped up indoors.

Hearing "I'm bored" from the backseat for the millionth time.

You might want to consider giving kidney stones a try sometime. I had a stone twice, and in both cases the pain was so bad that I vomited. The first time, it was over in an hour but the second time, it got stuck on the way to the bladder and required surgical interventions. It is the kind of pain where you start to think what floor the waiting room of the hospital is on, and if it would be enough.

When I had my four wisdom teeth removed and the anesthesia wore of I had pain where Ibuprofen did not cut it, but Metamizole did. With the stone, I went back to the hospital in an ambulance because Metamizole did not cut it, and was on an opiate drip within an hour.

I don't know if second for second, it is worse than getting kicked in the balls though. What is really dragging you down is that it does not stop. Getting kicked in the balls every ten seconds for hours might be as bad or worse, but good luck convincing your IRB and finding volunteers for that one.

I'm kinda curious whether this reflects a difference in internal experience, or a difference in what you've experienced. A number of things I'd rate worse than a hard unprotected nutshot are fairly uncommon, but I would be surprised if something like a major bone breaking were outside of your imagination.

Speaking for myself: Getting shredded from thighs to feet by trying to jump a barbed wire fence (and failing). Being glassed in a bar fight. Intestinal cramps from ulcerative colitis which literally made me vomit and pass out from literal pain for the only time in my life. Getting a healthy tooth removed by an old school dentist back in the day, while just on laughing gas. Migraines when I was younger, used to take me out completely for a few hours.

A kick in the balls hurts, but it's mostly over in a few minutes, unless you are very unlucky and rupture something I suppose.

I would say I've certainly had things which hurt longer than being hit in the balls. I've been trampled by a cow, I've had an infected tooth, and so on. But nothing that hurt more. Not even the time the oral surgeon cut into my tooth when it wasn't fully numb. Ball pain is just on another level in my experience.

Different balls, different pain I guess. I mean don't get me wrong, it hurts, but it's not on some other level of pain than other types for me at least.

I think that's normal. Right? It's normal for every day to be an MMA cage fight against a little monkey.

Were you also a little MMA monkey, long ago?

Turns out that it's normal for your kids to be like little mixtures of how you and your spouse were as kids, rather than for them to be like kids in general.

That sounds banally obvious when I put it into words, but before I had kids I'd never really put it into words, so I never thought of myself as a person who would end up really liking kids. Turns out that, although I still don't especially like kids in general, I really like my wife and I really like myself so I really like my kids in particular. As a slightly-less-obvious bonus, it turns out that kids make friends more readily with other kids who they have things in common with, so I like all my kids' friends and I really like most of them.

My son would never have kicked me in the balls, but he will gleefully launch a massive suicidal invasion against my in-first-place-until-then Civilization V nation, thereby distracting me long enough to let my wife win our family game while he gloats, which I guess is the nerd version of a balls-kicking (I don't think I've ever won one of our family Civ V games...). But because it's the nerd version I feel proud rather than upset. Even when he shows me up at sports, it's popular-among-nerds sports like rock climbing and "ninja" obstacle courses that he gravitates to.

I know exactly zero men who would choose to get kicked in the balls even once to have a child

I'm also a counterexample here. Personally I thought that the months of sleep deprivation during newborn care were worse than a more-acute-but-more-brief testicular injury (which I haven't suffered since I was a teen, thankfully), but each of the kids were still a net positive before they turned 1. Maybe I've just never taken a hard enough hit to the balls.

You have family Civ V games?!?!? Now that is goals... Well done

I'm living the dream!

We don't have them often enough, since my youngest isn't as big a fan as the rest of us, but variety is good too.

Ancient dwarven motto:

If your head is level with their navel, their groin is level with your teeth.

My husband has definitely gotten kicked, and elbowed, and headbutted in the balls more than zero times.

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