Circumcision is a tough choice.

Okay, this only applies to parents who are about to have a male child. (All others can skip it.)

Circumcision involves cutting off the male foreskin, which covers the head of the penis, usually at a time when the child is a baby. It's a choice parents have to make when they have a male child; doctors ask if you want it done. Or at least the doctor did when my male child was born.

I was of two minds about it. It hadn't been done on me when I was a baby, so I grew up with an intact foreskin that surrounded the head of my penis. (Sorry to be graphic, but you need to know what it's all about.) I don't think it would have been a problem except that most of the boys I went to school with had apparently had the operation and had penises that didn't look quite like mine as we all gathered around the communal urinal in the elementary school bathroom. Uh oh. Problem right away.

I was different. Not through any fault of my own: the decision had been made long before I had anything to say about it. But my whatever did look different, and I didn't know why.

The irony is that mine looked exactly as it was supposed to look, the way nature intended it.
The others, those with foreskin shorn off, were aberrations, the results of surgical procedures. But, again, mine looked different. I was aware of it, painfully, all through my childhood.

So what's the big deal about circumcising males? Why mess with nature, which put that foreskin there for some reason? Would you have your eyelids removed so you could see better? Would you have your little toe removed because it's just in the way? Why snip away the foreskin from the penis when it's there naturally?

I know I've read reasons, but none stick with me. Something about it being easier to clean the penis to prevent venereal microbes from lodging under that foreskin. But I've always found it easy to clean myself in the shower. Hey, that foreskin retracts easily.

When, later, I had sex with women, I never noticed a problem. When the penis is engorged with blood -- the definition of an erection -- the foreskin slips back, and we're ready to go.

There must be a religious or other reason for wanting to mutilate male children this way, but I'm at a loss to explain it. Please clue me in.

I had it done on my son because of the ostracism I experienced as a boy child growing up in a society that apparently demanded it, and I doubt that it did him any harm, but I'm not sure I would do it again or recommend it to others.

Generally speaking, I think we should leave nature alone.