Dan's Papers - June 5, 2009 - IF IT CONTINUES FOR MORE THAN 4 HOURS ...

Twenty years ago, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would see on television somebody say at the end of a commercial, "If your erection lasts for more than four hours, see your doctor."

But now, there it is, day after day, week after week, the message getting pounded home. So I guess it's out in the open. We can talk about it.

Tell you the truth, all those years before they realized the importance of alerting everyone to this problem I DID wonder about erections that lasted more than four hours. Or six hours. What do you do? What in God's name do you do?

I suppose in the interval between then and now there has been research. Studies. Findings. This is the 21st century. New and important medical findings are being made every day. As for this, the Surgeon General or whoever it is issuing this warning does not take this lightly. It's four hours.

Somebody comes in after three hours, tells the doctor about his problem, and the doctor says if it's still there in another hour, come back and I'll deal with it.

Four hours is the magic number.

But how did they get it? Why not TWO hours. Or two weeks? Well, I imagine that's what the studies were all about. Thousands of men were brought in. Very aggressive, hairy men. Very small, wimpy men. And they were all, one way or another, given erections. Those whose went down after two hours were okay. Those whose went down after three hours were okay. Those who got to four hours, that's trouble.

What happens after four hours? Horrible things. It just keeps going. It gets to four hours and it's out of control. It thinks, "I got this far, there is no turning back." It's free, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger - unstoppable.

Worse, the person it is attached to starts to get smaller and smaller and finally starts to shrivel up. Eventually, what you have is one enormous erection with just two feet under it. In some cases, there isn't even a mouth or eyes. It's horrible. You don't want to know what happens to those who stick it through to the bitter end for science. In the end, the truck pulls up, and they are just carted off. God bless them.

So it is four hours. I guess from that perspective there is this narrow window, just after four hours, but just before five, when the doctor can frantically do whatever they have to do to get the damn thing to go down before all hell breaks loose. I imagine it is a tap with those little chrome and rubber hammers that doctors use on the kneecap to test reflexes. A special tap. Not too soft, not too hard. Just right and just in the right place. Wham. It knocks it right down.

A doctor learns to do this in a special course during his third year at med school. Some people get it right away; others take a little longer. Then comes the final exam, and the volunteers from the nearby prisons march in. They have been fully prepared of course. And the students get just one chance at it. By the way, prisoners are paid twice what they get paid to hammer out license plates. It's good work, having your erection tapped down.

And for the doctor, it's an art. One false move and, well, disaster. Lawsuits.

There's going to be a medical specialty for this. Those who can get it right every time. Erection Deflation. In the yellow pages right after Ear, Nose and Throat and just before Foot Surgery.

I'm telling you, in some ways, the good old days were a whole lot better. You'd discover you had this problem - as I recall the magic number was eight hours - and you'd go home and take an ice cold shower. End of story.