Today I learned that there are anywhere from 100 million to 500 million sperm cells per human male ejaculation. Or according to another article, from 40 million to 1.2 billion, that is dudes can ejaculate the equivalent of the population of California up to the population of India. I don’t know why some guys have more than others, but most men are somewhere in between those. That’s a lot of little Juniors and Juniorettes. A healthy twenty year old male can easily snuff out half a billion little copies of himself on a boring Friday night. By the time that twenty year old is a fifty year old that might have reached a half trillion copies of himself. Rarely do these thoughts cross a man’s mind at the time, though. Nothing crosses his mind during ejaculation. The frontal lobe goes on autopilot and the thalamus and hypothalamus and various other parts of the brain that pre-date conscious thought take over. It sure feels good, but don’t expect us to write a poem describing it. We can’t even remember it. A hundred million little copies of us just just rushed down our urethras and we’re no more aware of it than a frog is. It’s not until it hits the nerve endings packed into the heads of our dongs that we’re jolted back into consciousness, even speech. Oh god oh god oh god. Like, I said, it’s not poetry, but at least the frontal lobe has sparked into life again. That’s the part of ejaculation we remember. Eloquence comes later, after we’ve washed up and made sure no one was watching us.

I have no idea what happens to the little fellas that never even get ejaculated. How long can a little copy of me wait in there? And what happens to all those me’s then?

I also learned that sperm cells are the tiniest little things, and even a half billion of them only make up about 5% of a dude’s semen, the rest being various fluids, saltiness and flavoring, not to mention stickiness and whatever it is that leaves stains on ceilings. Two thirds of this delicate brew is produced within the scrotum somehow, the other third by the prostate which apparently actually has a purpose. I mean, who knew?

Funny I learned all this at 65, though maybe it’s better that way, so I didn’t suffer guilt complexes afterward, especially since my testicles have been busily producing half a trillion little Brick cells and I’ve failed to reproduce any of them, the poor things. Then again half a trillion Bricks would get pretty annoying. There’s a reason for everything.