The worst thing I have ever seen

It all started earlier this week when I just happened to be watching The Search for the Funniest Mom in America 3 on Nickelodeon (yeah, I do realize it’s MTV for pre-teens). And by “just happened to be watching”, I mean I have absolutely no good reason for why I was watching it and have felt guilty ever since. But despite the fact this show SUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS, I didn’t turn it off, does that make me a bad person? And given the numeral "3" in the title, I'd imagine it's safe to assume there have been 2 previous installments to this humorless charade.

Why? How? Who is watching this? Aren't there enough glorified, talent(less) shows already been televised; now we're even making them specific to certain demographics? I'm just waiting for Dancing with Blind Senior Citizens with Arthritis. But this is all beside the point, as this isn’t about that dumb show Search For..., it’s about a promo I saw during a commercial break during that dumb show.

It was announcing the arrival of America’s Funniest Home Videos to the 'Loden, and while I can’t say if was for a new series or reruns, it didn’t matter, what did matter is that what I saw had me mortified.

We all know watching someone get hit in the package is the quintessential “funny home video”, heck, the whole genre was established solely on the strength of it, so it goes without saying that the classic "kid swings a wiffleball bat at his dad’s crouch" and "kid punches dad in package" would make their way into the ad. But this particular commercial featured the cream of the crop, the haut monde, the freakin’ crème de la crème.

Picture this: guy is peacefully asleep on his couch, while his daughters are standing on the couch. Sounds harmless enough, but I’m not talking about standing next to him or on the armrest; I’m talking on top of the backrest. Yeah, high up. And these little girls couldn’t have been more than 5 years old, combined, but I could see it in their eyes, their pupils burned with the hellish flames of mischief. And I don’t know if one of them egged on the other or promised to let her play with her Tickle Me Elmo, but a moment later one of the girls took the plunge, like she was jumping from atop the Grand Canyon into the Rio Grande.

I don't know if the father screamed, there was no way I could have heard it over my shriek of horror, but like a heat-seeking missile, the little girl slammed feet-first into her father’s package. Instantly, his torso and legs sprung together like a vice grip; I had no idea flexibility like that was even humanly possible.

Unfortunately, I haven’t the slightest to what transpired after that. Whether the girl literally went through her father and the couch, or if the other little monster still perched atop sofa decided to finish her father’s vasectomy operation because my head refused to do anything but jeer away in horror. Even replaying the events in my mind now leaves me breathlessly cringing. And by the time my eyes returned to the television, they were showing this precious clip of a darling baby with food all over its mouth. It was cute. But back to the original topic, that was the worst thing conceivable thing a person, more specifically a man, could experience short of a sledgehammer to the same region.

What made it worse for this poor guy was that it happened when he was out cold. Here he is taking a pleasant stroll through dreamland before he's woken up to a shock of excruciating plain. If that were me, I would have thought I died in my sleep and woke up in hell. You can't breathe, you're seeing red, and there are two little demons prancing around you with delight, all they need is little pitchforks. Even if you were able to brace yourself, the pain would be unbearable, and here's this guy, totally relaxed, unaware, and unprotected, with his stuff just there.

If the government is looking for new ways to extract confessions from terrorists, all they need to do is tie them down and have a kid repeatedly jump on their junk from four feet in the air. I would spill my guts as soon as I see a rugrat thrust his arms back and bend his knees on the springboard. Now you maybe thinking "why not just have an adult jump on their junk, that would hurt so much more," but an adult's feet are too big. Tiny extremities are a necessity for pinpoint accuracy and absolute misery.

But then you might say, "why even have someone jump on it then, why not just smash it with a blunt object?" Fine, you got me, jeez, you've already made me think about this too much as it is. Let's talk about something else, like I dunno, HOW THIS ALL JUST HAPPENED TO BE CAUGHT ON TAPE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

It had to be by chance, right? I mean who doesn't tape themselves while they sleep on a couch? There's no way someone would script something as sinister as this for the chance to win a couple thousand dollars. Humans are waaaaay above that. Okay, actually that had to be exactly what happened, that or he cheated on his wife. Either way, it was soo not worth it.