Terminal Sperm

Usually when I venture into the kitchen at work to microwave my lunch, the room is full of female co-workers who are in heated discussions about some subject of importance. It’s a diverse range of topics on which they hit: whatever was on television the previous night to illegal immigration (very passionate, no, violently passionate about this subject) to what I’ll call a group therapy session. The most common subject of their group sessions is about the men in their lives, or more precisely, what heartless, thoughtless, careless, asshole bastards the opposite sex is.

During my excursions into hostile territory such as this I do the only intelligent thing I know to do: I keep my mouth shut.

I write all this as a way to introduce my theory regarding the findings of a Danish study. The research found that women who drank while they were pregnant were more likely to give birth to sons with lower sperm counts than the sons of women who refrained from drinking alcohol while pregnant. The researchers couldn’t think of a reason why this happens, meaning more studies would have to be performed. Or they can ask me, and I can supply them with a possible hypothesis for their dilemma.

Honestly, the reason is a no-brainer. Think of all the stupid things men do when they have been drinking. (I just realized I left stupid out of the above heartless thoughtless, careless, etc. etc. characterization above. Sorry about that!) Anyway, back on subject, if men can do stupid things after they have a few drinks in them, can it be any stretch of the imagination to figure out what their sperm will do with some liquor.

I can’t imagine it’s very pretty. Some sperm will get deluded feelings of invincibility and try to swim up the urinary tract, where once in the bladder the uric acid will do its work...and BAM! Instant spermicide! At least that’s the story they told us in 12th grade health class!

Still some other male fertility creatures will play stupid sperm tricks on their fellow creatures. They’ll go up to their buddy and drunkenly dare them, “Hey Harry, pull my flagellum!” That’ll probably take a few hundred thousand sperm out of the mix there.

There is also the chance that many sperm will turn on their fellow sperm in a drunken state. We could theorize that this is a way to cut down on the competition during ejaculation, otherwise known as the “Big Swim”. It could also happen if some sperm get a sudden urge to paint the urethra in pink and display a fondness for show tunes. I know this is not pleasant to speculate, but we have to allow for the possibility that human sperm are not progressive thinking individuals, and that they may enforce a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the vas deferens.

So, let’s tabulate the sperm casualty count so far. A few hundred thousand drunken sperm lost to jackass style stunts, a few more hundred thousand tailless fellows who just drift around and eventually succumb to irrelevancy, and still a few hundred thousand more fall prey to homophobia. Yes, this could explain why sperm counts are lower in boys who mothers drank while they were pregnant.

Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean that the surviving sperm are all that much better than their dead comrades. After all, it’s the survivors who will win the “Big Swim” race, fertilize the egg, overcome the 50-50 odds of developing into a female, and eventually grow to be the heartless, stupid, careless, blah, blah asshole ogres that make life miserable for all the ladies in my office lunch room. Well, at least they’ll always have something to talk about over their noon meals.

(Thank you for reading! Please remember drinking alcohol while pregnant can lead to stupid sperm. Also careless, thoughtless, asshole sperm, or even heartless, careless, thoughtless, asshole bastard sperm, or...)