Won’t he… or willy?

MY five-year-old grandson is holding his willy.

I don’t have a problem with this. Yet.

I believe all small boys do it. Small as in young; I’m not referring to the size of his willy. He might develop a complex.

In fact, no one is referring to his willy at all. Ever. Nor the fact that he never lets go of it; for exactly that reason – he might get a complex, and we couldn’t have that, could we?

Instead he’s going to be a social outcast when, at the age of 35, he attends cocktail parties (pardon the pun) with a drink in one hand and his penis in the other.

Maybe I’m old fashioned. Maybe it will become terribly avante garde, like bolts through your lips and tattoos on your forehead. Trousers will be especially designed to make willy-holding easier.

There was a time when the notion would have struck me as too absurd to discuss, but in my adult lifetime social appetites have, I suspect, changed more than in any other 50-year period. I remember the furore in the 1960s when BBC cricket commentator Brian Johnston said on air (and he was talking about their names, for heaven’s sake!): “The batsman’s Holding; the bowler’s Willey.”

Since then, for example we have learned to feel comfortable about homosexuality, and why not! So a bit of social willy tugging ought not to surprise us overmuch. A Dr Spock website suggests we should tell small boys (still referring to age) that there are times when it’s appropriate, like in the privacy of your own home. They used to say that about homosexuality, but not any more.

In a way it surprises me that my grandson has taken this step in his development. I assume it’s an insecurity thing. He used to have a toy dinosaur that he gripped from the moment he woke until he went to bed. It seemed to me to be a better choice. It meant he could still function as a child with the normal number of limbs. He might not have been able to pick things up (not with the hand that held the dinosaur, anyway) but at least he could wave his arms about, and point at something on the ceiling. Now if he tries those things he throws himself on his back. Or develops a willy that is so elongated no one will ever be able to call him a small boy again.

I feel sad for him. I mean, I don’t expect he really will be welded to his penis when he’s 20, not physically anyway. But I suspect he’ll be pretty much absorbed by it mentally, and in a way that girls are not. Is it my imagination, or are small girls a lot less pre-occupied with their genitals than boys?

If so, it’s a trend that seems to continue right beyond puberty and possibly into old age.

If you have any doubts, just check out the junk emails that come your way. If you’re as unlucky as me you’ll get several dozen every day advising you that, really, a small penis is going to destroy your life.

I tried an experiment (no, not that kind of experiment!) and set up an email with a girl’s name (Colleen), and still I received hundreds of messages suggesting I needed Viagra or some kind of penis implant. How come I didn’t receive hundreds of emails, as Colleen, offering me larger breasts, or… I don’t know… whatever it is that women feel insecure about?

I think it’s because they don’t. Feel insecure. Not as much as men, anyway.

Back to my grandson… I don’t know what the answer is. Let him enjoy it while he can, I suppose. We even talked about buying him a false one, from a sex shop, purely to give him the kind of freedom to wave his arms about that the dinosaur used to provide.

But on balance we all reckoned it would be a lot easier to explain to people in shops why he was clutching his own penis, rather some kind of plastic look-alike.