Puberty is filled with pitfalls.  Some come in the form of, what seem like at the time, physical deformities.  Others as awkward developments in social interactions. Your first girlfriend, your first kiss, your first trip to second base, three years pass, your first trip to third base, three more years pass.  I’m assuming that was the same for everyone… right?  At least to some degree, there are the standard milestones, no matter the time frame.

When it came to the physical aspects, aside from the fact that I still am unable to grow a beard, I had it pretty lucky.  I had pimples,  I still do, but never more than a few and none anywhere else on my body.  I  grew hair in the right places and avoided most of the wrong ones.  My voice, with the exception of the occasional crack, never sounded too ridiculous.  I grew at a fairly even rate from seventh grade through freshman year of college avoiding any stretch marks or odd length limbs.  The one thing that I had a lot of trouble with though, that plagued me on an almost daily basis, was my penis.

I suppose there was nothing wrong with it, in fact it was probably proving that everything was quite alright with it, I just had no control over the monster in my pants.  You see, even if your parents give you one of those books Tristan’s parents gave him, they don’t have any strategies for dealing with your new found Dr. Jeckly and Mr. Hyde.  Let’s call a spade a spade, that’s what having a penis in 7th grade felt like.  On one hand, well, you had your hand and you had fairly recently discovered the best physiological feeling your body can offer… The only caveat was that at this point you had no control over the beast.  Because no one ever tells you anything about dealing with it, everyone comes up with their own strategies, these were mine.

“Just Keep Flexing”

In seventh grade, anything can cause your pants to grow mis-shaped.  No literally, anything.  You’d be in class thinking “Wow, this PEMDAS thing makes math a lot easier.” and all of the sudden there was exponential growth inside the parenthesis. Having an erection in class was very nerve racking because you didn’t want anyone to find out.

When this first started happening to me I had no idea what to do.  My first reaction was, “just tire it, it’ll go away” as if it were some kind of hyper-active puppy.  I started putting my penis through calisthenics.  As a 24 year old man, I realize now that this was probably the worst possible technique I could have come up with.  I would look up at the clock and realize “only twenty minutes left, I have to get rid of this thing.”  Ten minutes later I had started sweating and the problem in my pants had just gotten worse. So what did I do? Just kept flexing. Inevitably I had to move on to other techniques.

Just a Casual Guy

Eventually I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get rid of it, so I started looking for ways to hide it when going mobile.  If you had to move classes and you were unsuccessful with the old “Just Keep Flexing” technique, you could just act casual.  This technique required you to completely pack up your things while remaining seated.  This means putting on your backpack while in one of those tiny middle school desks. Once successfully packed just put your hands in your pockets, and get things under control.  The only problem was that you couldn’t take your hands out of your pockets.  No hugging girls, or giving daps to guys, you just had to play it cool and casual… and rush as fast as you could to your desk in the next class.  Again, I realize now that there was nothing casual about this at all.

The Tuck Up

This requires no explanation what so ever, you get it, you’ve done it, or if you are a girl you’ve probably witnessed it performed.  It is the worlds most ubiquitous strategy.  It transcends culture, race, creed and era.  It’s a surefire way to address the problem…and  it feels nice too.

For as wonderful as this technique was, I still had problems with it because I reached sexual maturity before any other stage of puberty.  I was clocking in at 4’8″ and a mean 80 lbs.  I wasn’t even tall enough to ride all the rides but I had grown my man parts.  The tuck up isn’t as discrete as you might like when you are wearing size 12 children’s pants.  It made up 25% of my profile view.  And the tucked in shirts didn’t help either.

No matter what strategy you used to maintain discretion, whether it was one of these or some other equally ridiculous one, there is one thing that allows you to blend in better than any other… middle school itself.  I recently spent time substitute teaching at a middle school and I have to tell you that it is the most absurd, confused, backwards mess of hormones that exists in human society.  It is this little microcosm of developmental angst.  All the strange behaviors and awkward interactions cancel each other out.  I know now that no one ever noticed me fidgeting and adjusting because they were all preoccupied doing it themselves.  If I were in middle school now, knowing what I do, I probably would have just walked around showing off.

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