At a picnic for a one year olds’ birthday recently, a fellow party guest excitedly confessed he was about to get the snip.
He was thrilled and told me it was high time as his third daughter had definitely been a surprise, and he certainly wasn’t risking fatherhood a fourth time around.
I had met this man for about 3.5 minutes prior to this discussion of his impending vasectomy, and while I was calm on the outside, on the inside I was thinking “please don’t tell me any other private anatomical details”.
Vasectomies are rapidly becoming the rage in my peer group, as we come out of that post-baby fog and realise our families are chaotic enough without adding to the brood.
None of my contemporaries have actually gone through with the procedure (except, presumably, the excited stranger at the BBQ) — but it’s definitely on the agenda for many.
It made me realise I’m entering another new age of conversation.
For a good decade, talk has centred on engagements, marriages and babies … and now it’s vasectomies, renovations and childcare arrangements.
My early 20s were spent dissecting my girlfriend’s sexual experiences — the good, the bad, and the very ugly … now most of us are “settled down” it becomes slightly awkward to talk about a friend’s partner that you see regularly.
Plus we are settled — this is (largely) not the decade of divorce or separations — and most are very happy, if not exhausted, with their lot.
The over-analysis of bouquet choices and table settings for weddings has thankfully passed too, and now we talk about cubby house and bicycle choices for our growing children.
We talk about our growing smile lines, the wrinkles that are becoming more permanent on our faces and whether Botox or just a good moisturiser is the answer.
We laugh at the over-plasticised: certain women in the spotlight who were naturally beautiful, but now look like an ironed-out version of their true self, not quite recognisable, but somehow the same.
Politics rates a mention here and there, one friend agonising that her husband’s voting choice is the opposite to hers: she wasn’t aware of how different their views on asylum seekers are, and she feels quite desperate at his decision.
Mostly though, it’s the mundane, the day-to-day conversations about which child is sick, or better, which child is learning to read, which child is a fussy eater or not.
I imagine that soon enough the vasectomy conversations will enter into talk about the schoolyard: which school is better or worse, how children are performing academically, on the sporting field, in their dance lessons.
It’s like you become an expert on something new every 10 years or so — another little life marker.
My mother’s generation are all having cancer checks, and learning about life as grandparents: “what lovely little time-wasters they are!”
Following the BBQ, a male relative called up, announcing his chance of having a third baby was over. And my point was proven, this is the decade of the snip.
And so the cycle continues: each decade, another conversation.
