Penis Envy

Let me explain:

About the year 1947 my mother committed my brother and me to the Catholic orphanage in Charleston, S.C. She did this on the advice of a priest, Father Wolf, of Sacred Heart Parish. The theory seems to have been that since our father had abandoned the family and refused to pay child support, and since our grandmother with whom we had been living, was an incompetent babysitter, we deserved to be delivered into the loving hands of the nuns on 120 Queen street. Nice theory. My brother and I were so delivered. I was twelve years old, he was eleven. My brother and I found this new state to be devastating. We both began wetting the bed. The loving nuns responded to this urinary challenge asymmetrically: the nun overseeing my dormitory moved me as far away from her bed as possible. The nun overseeing my brother's dormitory had my brother circumcised. Both approaches apparently worked to the nuns' satisfaction.

Why had my brother and I been separated in the first place? I don't know. Other brothers were not so separated. In fact, I had three brothers (the Jones brothers) in my dormitory. The Driggers brothers also shared a dormitory. So I am mystified by our separation. They did not try to circumcise me. I suppose I was a bit too old for that sort of thing.

Sister Charlotte (the nun who dominated our dormitory) showed me how to curl the mattress up so as to dissipate moisture. She also showed me how to wash my sheets. This solved my problem, but not permanently. I continued to wet the bed.  

My brother, on the other hand, stopped wetting the bed immediately after being circumcised. Being circumcised at the age of eleven must not have been a fun thing. I think he was afraid they would cut the rest of it off.