This is not the story of the worst time I ever got nutted. This is a story of the second-worst time.

I was about ten. My sister was twelve. My sister had a thirteen-year-old friend. Her friend was much bigger than I was. I didn’t like her.

One day, I said something mean to my sister’s friend. Something really mean. I won’t tell you what it was, but remember that I was ten.

She chased me. I ran. I ran all the way home. I burst in through the door of my house and tried to get it closed but she was hot on my heels. I screamed at her that she wasn’t allowed in my house, but she ignored me. She chased me down the stairs into the basement. I ran to the end of the hallway. There was nowhere left to go. I was trapped. I turned to face the inevitable and saw her relentlessly stalking down the hallway towards me. I felt like Linda Hamilton with the big, metallic Terminator pursuing her with the inexorable purpose of ripping her guts out.

Unlike "Sarah Connor," however, I was a total coward. I crumpled to the floor in fear and held my hands up in supplication, hoping against hope that she would take mercy on me. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!”

She ignored my pleas, grabbing my legs to spread them apart. She positioned herself accordingly, pulled her leg back to give a mighty swing, and drove her knee straight into my crotch.

Spiteful hag.

Actually, she wasn’t. I really did deserve it. Needless to say I never called anyone that name again.

Fast forward a quarter century. This is the story of my worst nutting.  I’ve got a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. We were heading to the in-laws for dinner and my wife didn’t want us to be late. Unfortunately, having two little kids often precludes being on time.

My wife had managed to get our daughter ready, but my son was taking his time. He had started to assert his independence and there was an argument taking place about wearing a nice, button-down shirt vs. a ratty t-shirt with a lizard emblazoned on it. Eventually I realized that I was never going to win the argument and that no one gives a crap what a little boy wears anyway, so I gave in and tried to hustle him out to the car.

We would often play a variety of rough-housing games, and I believe my son had a sense that we were in a hurry and wanted to milk a minimal amount of playing out of me because he realized that he was holding the cards by having the ability to make us all late. Little brat.

He declared that he would not walk down the stairs. We had to do the game where he jumped into my arms.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s just do it and then go.”

Our stairs are of the switchback variety, so we did the first set where he jumped and I caught him under the armpits. Then we moved across the landing and repositioned to do the same thing for the bottom set of stairs.

I should mention that the boy already had his shoes on, and that these shoes had hard points at the toes.

He jumped and did something weird in the air that I can’t quite recall. I had to lunge forward a bit to catch him, but I did manage to grab him under the armpits and prevent a face plant. Unfortunately, one of his feet swung forward and made a hard, direct contact with my right testicle.

If you’ve ever been seriously nutted then you know that you’ve got about two seconds before it really starts to sink in. I used those precious seconds to step back down the stairs and set my son on the floor. Then I staggered a couple of steps into the living room, lay down on the carpet, and assumed the fetal position.

“Daddy, are you okay?”

No response.

“Daddy?”

My wife came into the house. “What’s taking so long?” She looked over at me. “My God! Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Mmmmmpphhhbbbllll.”

“James! Answer me! Are you okay?”

I managed to form one word that I thought would get the point across and convince her to back off so I could die in peace. “Nuts,” I said.

Being that she’s a woman and could not possibly comprehend the pain I was in, I half expected her to tell me to suck it up and get my ass out in the car. She didn’t, though. “Oh,” she said. “Well, just take your time. We can be late.” I had misjudged her.

She went outside to get my daughter out of her car seat and brought her inside. She saw me lying on the carpet and thought a game was afoot and squealed, “Daddy!” and jumped on my hip expecting some kind of horsie ride.

“Uhhhhh!” I moaned.

My wife hauled our daughter off of me and said, “We need to leave Daddy alone for a little while. He doesn’t feel very good.”

“Are you sick, Daddy?” my son asked.

“Kind of.” I finally managed to speak coherently.

It took a good 15 minutes before I was ready to move again. Normally I never let my wife drive unless I’ve been drinking. She’s not a bad driver, it’s just one of those few guy things that I do. This night, however, I had no desire to operate the three different pedals on our five-speed Acura.

The aftermath proved that it was way worse than the nutting I received when I was ten. The right testicle turned purple and became swollen to almost double its usual size, and it took days before it got back to normal. We stopped procreating at the two kids, so I never did find out if it had a deleterious effect on my fertility.

And much to my son’s chagrin, we never played that game again.