“Did you bring the love pouch?”

I felt rather touched that my wife asked me about my “love pouch.”

Typically, she doesn’t care, but maybe she is coming around. I think a tear rolled down my cheek.

The truth is that even men don’t really care about their “love pouch” themselves. It’s just something that hangs in there. I don’t have to look it up to know that “love pouch” is Greek for “coming along for the ride.”

I remember being a teenager and the lack of respect all boys have for other boys’ “love pouches.” We loved playing soccer, marbles, rock fights, and hitting each other, fists closed, right on each other’s pouches. If you weren’t a boy growing up and wonder if this is true, yes, it is. Boys are dumb!

Sometimes, we even sang folk songs, “Ay, Anita! Ay, Anita! Abreme la puerta, Anita, pum pum pum!” Pum pum pum is meant to mimic the sound of knocking ona door, but instead of knocking on a door, we knocked on the “pouches.”

Our teachers and parents warned us that we were going to make someone sterile, but we still didn’t care.

When you are a teenage boy — and your prefrontal cortex is not yet developed because it happens when you are a man of nearly 80 — nothing is funnier than seeing a friend writhing in pain on the ground from a well-placed knock on the “love pouch.”

Maybe, subconsciously, we were hoping to give each other a varicose vein.

A varicose vein was the holy grail to get out of the country’s mandatory military draft without your parents having to find a high-ranking military official to buy off. This was also a mandatory requirement to graduate college. You could’ve finished your college credits but would not get a diploma if you didn’t satisfy the draft.

But a testicular varicose vein, or varicocele, would get you out of it. Why? I have no idea. I think it makes it hard to carry heavy stuff.

In our senior year, we were driven to the basement of a Jesuit school. The military had set up shop there. My thirty classmates and I were all walked into a small room.

We were instructed to put our pants down and face the wall. The doctor would come around and tap you on the shoulder. That was your cue to turn around and let him cup your “love pouch.” The facing of the wall was meant to prevent people from seeing your business. And for the most part, it did, except for the vigilant gaze of that one teacher who eagerly volunteered to oversee our medical exams.

Only one boy out of the sixty in the two graduating classes suffered from a varicose vein. Everyone knew who this kid was, and he was teased relentlessly. He went on to have a kid out of wedlock right after graduation.

It is unclear whether or not he thought his twisted testicle would double as a contraceptive. Or if he wanted to show us that he was still a man. This is not surprising; men have a funny way of proving their masculinity.

A couple of years earlier, another graduating class showed up to this check-up to see if they were lucky enough to get out of the military draft without paying their way out.

Shortly after these exams, we learned that one of the boys was missing one of the ball bearings in the pouch.

A friend of mine had the misfortune of physically resembling the older boy. The mere mention of the boy’s last name would send my friend into a raging frenzy. He would place his crotch close to people’s hands and loudly ask, “Would you like to count them?” Again, men have a funny way of proving their masculinity. And boys are dumb!

The last time I thought about my “love pouch” was when we started trying for a baby, and I tried all the at-home tricks for bettering the environment of your little swimmers, like no more computers on my lap or scalding baths or tight underwear.

And then the last at-home trick: check for a varicose vein.

They are very common because of the poor design of the testicular veins. (I bet you didn’t wake up this morning hoping to learn all this, yet here we are.)

Do you know when you are rightie and you are going to write? So you just approach the piece of paper and write! That’s the right vein.

And when you are a leftie, you have to turn your arm into a hook, lean over the paper, then approach the paper from behind as if you were sneaking out of a closet, yelling, “Surprise!” Then you smear your hand all across the paper and the fresh ink, and you end up with a smudge on your palm.

That’s the left vein and why it is so fragile and easy to torque.

 The placement of the testicular vein has to be the most compelling argument against intelligent design because there is nothing intelligent about it.

Because of this precarious placement, it is also very common for men to suffer from testicular torsion, which leads to inflammation, which could lead to varicose veins, which could lead to infertility — or at least according to very well-researched and referenced WebMD.

I read the instructions on checking for one, only to discover that one of the zippers in my “love pouch” was inflamed.

I freaked out. A quick check on the interweb, I found not only that I was never going to have any kids, but I also had very advanced testicular cancer and had only a few weeks to live. Thanks, WebMD.

I’m a big fan of do-if-at-home approaches because, in my late 20s, I went into the ER thinking I was having a heart attack. There, I learned I was not having a heart attack but a good old panic attack. I was returned into the world with a $9,000 bill for the lesson, which did not help with the panic.

The lesson was, “Never again, medical establishment!!!!”

So, I found a list of home remedies for testicular torsion. I did all these in secret because I didn’t want to tell my wife that things might not work.

Shortly after, we had our first baby.

That was the last time I thought about my “love pouch.”

Until recently; my wife asked me if I remembered bringing the “love pouch.”

I couldn’t believe she was asking me about this in front of the kid.

“Which ‘love pouch’?” I asked with a grin and a wink.

“The one your mom got you for Jovie.” She said.

“Jesus, babe! Don’t put it like that. That’s sick!”

“What are YOU talking about?”

At that moment, I remember that my mom had brought my daughter a pink pouch with the words “love” engraved on the side.

My wife wasn’t asking me about MY “love pouch.”

She doesn’t care about it.

Nobody does.