The Petri Dish

A mortifyingly comical true story of the chaos in a blended family with five kids.

Starting in 2013, I went through a god-awful divorce. Through countless mediators, lawyers, psychological evaluators, judges, police officers…you name it…I spent endless hours sitting in the beige and taupe nightmare that is the County Courthouse.

And yet somehow during that process, I was able to meet the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, my current wife Anna, who I met somewhere in Season 3 of 6 of this shitty divorce saga.

(Season 3, by the way, was rated TV-MA for traumatic violence, foul language, nudity, alcohol, and whatever else… I don’t even remember it actually)

In case you’re wondering how we met…she “super liked” me on Tinder even though she lived like 70 miles away in Philadelphia.

She wanted it.

As much as I felt like an entirely shattered and broken man (and I am), Anna saw through those complex layers of cynicism and self-doubt. She saw someone who appreciates being in the moment, has the strength and fortitude to endure hard things and still laugh his way through them.

Most importantly, Anna accepted not just me, but my two boys as well. She took them in as if they were her own. And she already had her own two daughters who are roughly the same age as my kids. But Anna knew my kids were deprived of a good mom that they deserved, and she always sought to give them whatever portion of that she could provide. And I love her for that.

One day, after about two years of dating, my older son, who was about ten at the time, approached me and said, “So dad, are you going to marry Anna, or what?”

Inquisitive little bastard, eh?

Well I was hesitant to give an answer…I didn’t know how he would take it if I said yes. Also…I was nervous myself…I mean clearly I wasn’t good at selecting people who didn’t want to shit all over me. And what if Anna was just there to suck out whatever crumbs of a soul that the other bozo happened to leave behind?

So I gave him a deep complex philosophical response…something that his ten year old mind could understand and of course not feel threatened.

I think I said, “uhhh I dunno.”

Without hesitation, he said “I think you should. You always said you were going to marry someone who treats you right, and more importantly treats us right, and she’s really good to all of us.”

He was right. It relieved me of so much self-doubt and boosted my confidence that I was somehow on the right track. So, the decision was made…I was restarting our life with Anna and her two daughters.

She even relocated herself and her kids from Philadelphia. So suddenly it’s like we became the Brady Bunch…except where we live, they call us “The Shady Bunch.”

Well since we were both approaching our older age…I was diving headfirst into 40 and she was about to turn 39 for the third time…we had also each shared this sentiment that we felt like we were missing one extra baby, and the window of opportunity was rapidly closing. I wanted a girl to add to my two boys, she wanted a boy to add to her two girls.

I even had a girl’s name already picked out…Fiona Grace…Grace was my grandmother’s name…and coincidentally, grace is also a feature that I totally lack.

And Anna had the boy’s name already picked…Shepherd James…James after my grandfather with whom I even shared a birthday.

So, we rolled the dice and out came this beautiful baby boy. Our little Sheppie. And I was amazed at how easy it happened…I mean like no effort at all…like one or two pumps max! I must have some sort of Michael Phelps kind of Olympic super sperm!

So now we had five kids living in our house. Five kids. I can’t underscore enough the challenges of having five kids. Especially since we live in a three-bedroom house. This is like Hoarders: Children Edition. They’re like stacked floor to ceiling. Sometimes we go out to dinner just to escape the insanity, but instead it’s like we just bring it with us.

No matter where you can actually score a table for seven people, you have this miserable experience …one kid has his eyes glued to the phone, two of the others wander off into the abyss and they’re never at the table when their overpriced tuna tower that they won’t even eat arrives, and the toddler is screaming “I wanna watch trucks for toddlers!” So you throw him your phone so he can dick around on YouTube for a bit and then you catch him sending bullshit emails to work clients. Then the massive bill arrives complete with mortgage paperwork and you sign the check as quickly as possible without even reading it. It would honestly be less expensive to hire a babysitter, but we know we would probably return home to a crime scene with helicopters and sirens.

Well, maybe about six months after our baby was born, and as we got adjusted to this new calamity of an exercise with five kids, my wife finds out she’s pregnant again! I’m telling ya…Olympic sperm! Maximum strength! Irish twins! Six kids!

<nervous laugh>

However, as it turned out, my wife had a miscarriage. Which was sad and hard.

But…it was also an awakening.

I was obviously being totally adolescent and irresponsible. I mean….at that point it was public information that I had genetically modified Olympian sperm with Chris Kyle sniper accuracy. With great power comes great responsibility. It was time for me to unload the ole cannon and throw away the ammo. On to get the ole snippity snip snip.

The vasectomy procedure was pretty simple. It was easy. The fun part came when the doctor handed me a petri dish during one of my follow up appointments and told me they needed a sperm sample to verify the procedure was a success.

I was a little nervous about this petri dish routine…like…how did this all go down? Did some nurse hand you a stack of nudie mags? Plus, was I really gonna have to belt one out in the janitor’s closet at the doctor’s office? How mortifying!

Well, it turns out I was told to bring the petri dish with me back home and then deliver the sealed container IMMEDIATELY.

So I raced home and quickly had to figure out how to execute this embarrassing mission and get the sample back to them right away.

You see…it’s very difficult to find a time and place in a house of five kids. At the time, two of them were thirteen years old, one was eleven, another was ten, and then of course there was the baby.

It’s like total mayhem all the time. One’s playing some song on the piano that I’ve heard a billion times. The two boys are almost always fighting with each other. It’s like George Costanza arguing with Sam Kinnison. There’s a baby crying. We’ve got three dogs barking. Three cats. A lizard. I even have a pig … and I don’t mean one of the kids. So where am I supposed to go??

Well the answer is obvious: the bathroom, right?

Wrong.

In my house, that doesn’t work. Why? Because I have teenagers…both a boy and a girl and oddly enough the boy spends more time on his hair than she does.

Well, the same story goes for my bedroom. I just don’t feel safe there. The door lock works like 20% of the time, and almost 100% of that is when you’re trying to get OUT of the room.

So that leaves just one spot. The front yard.

…I mean the basement. And I don’t mean the nice part of the basement, because that doesn’t exist…no no…I mean the really bad part of the basement that no normal person would ever venture into.

I mean the part that looks like it was featured in Unsolved Mysteries. It’s the part where I have all sorts of weird shit stored: the kitty litter boxes, cans of dried paint, a six foot tall fully unclothed male mannequin lurking in the corner (don’t ask). It smells horrific.

…the basement I mean, not the mannequin.

The fluorescent lights have this weird flicker like a scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The boiler occasionally makes weird clanking noises like it’s gonna attack you. What kid would ever want to venture down there??

Plus, down there I have the added benefit of hearing when the creaky basement door opens up at the top of the stairs and have about five to ten seconds to quickly get my act together even if the kids were to go on a spelunking mission to come find me.

So, I decide that’s my safety zone and I set myself set up for one of the least romantic moments in my life. A real low point.

Armed with a petri dish, however, I was able to convince myself it was all in the name of science.

Well, I quickly got my phone teed up with whatever pornographic material will get the job done. You see, back in the day this task could be accomplished simply by glancing at a Victoria’s Secret catalog while it was still in the mailbox, so this shouldn’t be too difficult.

So here I am…in the dankest pit of my 150 year old house, with a bottle of lotion, a petri dish, and my phone playing some “scenery.”

As I shed all elements of self-respect and get down to business, I could hear the galloping of maniacal children pouncing around upstairs essentially mere inches above me. When my oldest stepdaughter walks around the house it sounds like someone falling down the stairs.

“I sure hope no one is getting hurt up there” I think to myself…as I continue to masturbate.

But all I can hear are the voices of kids arguing about Xbox controllers and who ate the last of the Cake Batter ice cream. I feel like I need to constantly act as a referee for every possible conversation they engage in.

“Daaaaaaaaaad?” I hear my son call.

“What the hell does he want??” I ask myself as I ignore his wailing siren of a voice warning me of the imagined crisis that I’m about to hear.

“Dad!!!!”

Suddenly, his voice has shifted from the long wailing cry for help to this bitchy demanding tone, as if to say, “put your dick away and help me.”

“…Dad?”

There’s now concern in his tone. He’s wondering what happened to his dad. He’s worried. Poor kid. Where could dad possibly be??

“Goddamn it…what??!”

This time, I said that part out loud…and completely out of breath because I’m getting old…and frantic masturbation isn’t part of my aerobic exercise routine.

“Declan’s wearing my bike helmet!”

“So uhhh just ride your bike without it this time and don’t crash and uh..stay off the road” I selfishly suggest to him. “Now please go away and lemme finish.”

“Finish what?”

“Uh…nothing.”

So now I’m holding this flaccid appendage and sort’ve half-assing it. It’s time to get back in gear and back to business.

Look at me. I feel like the world’s biggest loser. But with eyes on the end zone, I hammer on.

Suddenly, I can hear the basement door creak open. Aw fuck it…I don’t even care. I just keep going. I can see children’s feet standing on the stairs as they presumably reached up to a shelf at the top of the stairs to get something. They meander back upstairs.

And then…the escalation point summons itself in all its magical glory. As I finally approach the event horizon of ejaculatory bliss (I mean, scientific mission completion), my head races with images in this Quantum Leap type variety of scenarios.

In one scenario, I consider the possibility that some kid could still walk in and have all shreds of innocence extracted from them.

In another possible scenario, my wife comes home from work and discovers what I’m doing and realizes what a loser she married.

Annnnd that’s when the actual worst of all possible and yet entirely unpredictable scenarios happened…

…I realize that I have completely forgotten to remove the lid of the petri dish!

I scramble to open the container as I make a futile attempt to prevent what was now deemed to be an overly successful and unfairly premature mission completion.

But my efforts were totally useless. It was too late. I helplessly juggled this plastic container as it slid through my greasy palms in some Harlem Globetrotters meet The Three Stooges circus act.

Disgusted, I looked down to see a slurry of my bodily fluids combined with kitty litter, dust, and cobwebs and whatever else covered the surface of that dungeon floor.

I just stood there with my soiled hands holding a sealed petri dish which was filled with nothing but shame.

The worst part is when I called the doctor’s office to explain to the receptionist what had just happened and why I wasn’t going to be able to deliver my sample to them. I could almost hear her snicker as she delivered the obvious:

“You know you didn’t have to bring it back right away today. You could have done it whenever it was convenient and dropped it off at that time.”

In other words, I did not have to subject myself to that whole exercise. I could have waited for the kids to be at school. I just had to deliver the sample to them as soon as it was in the container.

And…I didn’t even have to share the whole ridiculous story with her. I could have just called and asked her if I could bring it tomorrow.

But…I guess at least I still only have five kids.

Come to think of it … I don’t think I ever did drop off that sample…

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This story was the 2022 Cringefest Winner. Cringefest is an annual event where writers share their most mortifying stories in front of a live audience for a good cause. All proceeds from the event support Project Write Now community outreach programs.