Episode 80: Snip. Snip.

The eagles have flown back to Canada.

But the temp just passed 70 degrees. Wrens and robins are building nests. Crocuses have popped and there are multiple green shoots in the garden and the economy. It is the time of year when men's thoughts naturally turn to the office basketball brackets.

Geezer couldn't care less whether Wofford or Gonzaga make it to the Sweet Sixteen and hopes the Final Four will come and go as quickly as possible. But there is a little-remarked phenomenon that also takes place every year during March Madness:

Men choose this time to undergo vasectomies, causing a major annual spike in that elective procedure. This makes a certain peculiar sense. The surgery hurts for a day or two afterwards. Rest is mandated, with frequent applications of ice to the immediate area of the operation. Since they'll be sitting in front of the tube more or less continuously for a couple of weeks, these men think, why not do their wives a favor while they root for Vandy or the Running Devils. For a cherry on top, their better halves are known to be grateful for the sacrifice, which can bring later benefits.

That reminds me of a story:

I had a vasectomy back in 1972, when it was less common. My doctor was perfect: George Clooney-ish, tanned, with crinkly eyes, touch of grey at the temples, cleft chin. He assured me that the procedure was brief, involving two small incisions to either side of the scrotum and the snipping and cauterizing of two vessels called the vas deferens.

It could be done in his office, with local anesthetic, or in the hospital. I took the coward's option, not wishing to be awake if the nurse happened to goose the doctor at a critical moment. Then, given that this would involve people messing with three of my favorite possessions, I asked if it would hurt.

"Like a knee in the groin", he tanly reassured me.

It did. Ice was applied to the region for the next two days. After two weeks, the doctor told me to take a sample. Imagine that - medical authorization to spank the monkey. Crinkle.

Vasectomies were unusual enough that I wrote up the experience and sold it to Penthouse Magazine for their first American edition. A movie called Love Story had hit it big a year or so earlier. Its advertising tagline was the nonsensical but memorable, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

I titled my article "Vasectomy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry". It was reviewed favorably in the Saturday Review of Literature, quoted in several other magazines, and reprinted and distributed by the tens of thousands by Planned Parenthood. I lived to hear my title used as a punchline in a Catskills comic's standup routine and as a gag in a TV movie starring Lee Majors.

Bob Guccione, the editor and publisher of Penthouse, was delighted with the attention. He invited me to dinner in his private dining room in his first Penthouse Club in Mayfair, the tony London district. In attendance were Guccione, his main squeeze, me, and the recently anointed Penthouse Pet of the Year. We were served by dishy young women in French maid costumes. Miss Pet kept fumbling distractedly with the buttons on her blouse.

But that's another story.