From left to right: Michael Skarsten, Sam Lowy, our dream child, Ty Thursby
Last week while Sam, Ty and myself were munching on some tacos on our lunch break and for some reason the topic of male fertility came up. Sam expressed interest in knowing the “strength” of his genetic material and we started researching how much it would cost to test one’s sperm. It turns out that for $80 you can purchase a do-it-yourself male fertility test that can be used on four different occasions or visit the professionals at Fertility Plus.
So being the great co-workers that we are we thought it would be a good idea to test our virility over the weekend and share the cost of the test. The plan was to crown the champion of fertility with a bottle of champagne. Well needless to say we got ripped off by Micra-brand Home Sperm Check…unless we’re all sterile. We received zero results; an unfortunate discovery especially after the three of us had gathered the “sample”. I have detailed below what our “interesting Saturday” entailed.
The Test
This is where things start to get awkward. The three of us went into separate rooms and “went to work”. We set a timer so we could “race”. Sam took first place (or last depending on how you look at it), Ty was second, and I was third. Now this was particularly unsettling because we all had full knowledge that our cohorts were engaging in the same activity less than fifty feet away from each other. Not cool.
After the sample was collected we each had to wait 20 minutes for the specimen to “liquefy”. The twenty minutes involved us drinking a beer and averting eye contact. There was very little conversation. After the 20 minutes were up we confirmed that the specimen had in fact “liquefied” then we moved on to step two.
Step two involved all of us stirring the specimen then using a pipette to obtain a drop of the sperm and place it on a microscope slide. This is and of itself was pretty gross. We were each supposed to have between 2 and 6 milliliters. Ty and I clocked in at just over 2 milliliters, Sam was just under. So we took our specimen and placed them under the microscope that came with the kit anxious to see our little swimmers bouncing around. Ty went first and after focusing the microscope he could not see any flagellum or active protein. I tried my guys and no go. Sam had the same luck.
For the next hour we kept returning to the source samples and preparing new slides. After a while we realized our efforts were fruitless. We begrudgingly grabbed the rest of our sample and tossed it in the trash. All in all, this was a very anti-climatic end to one of the strangest Saturday’s of May.
There are a couple reasons why the test didn’t work.
- We are not scientists and we purchased the cheapest sperm testing kit online. Sometimes you need spend the extra dough if you want to get accurate results for your baby batter.
- The test asked us to abstain from any uhm emissions for the 72-hours prior to the test. None of us had the will power to make it the full three days.
- We had been drinking the night before that might have had an effect on our “samples”.
What we learned
- I never want to do this ever again. There is nothing more awkward than getting down to business knowing your friends/roommates are doing the same thing at the exact same time.
- Don’t test your sperm with a product you purchased online. We were doing this as a joke but I feel bad for all the dudes out there who are actually trying to figure out if they are sterile or not because they want to pop a baby out of their wife.
- Sperm liquefies!
- Don’t bring girls to your “all-dude jerk-off fest”.
- Not every online promotion goes viral. We asked people on Facebook to share this event for the chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card and date with the most fertile myrtle. The three of us were the only ones to share the event so it looks like we’re running off with the $20 gift card. Sorry guys you should have shared our sperm competition.
- Masturbation is not a team sport.
- Don’t make weekend plans over tacos and beer.
All-in-all none of us are very proud of what we did this Saturday, when we were driving home from work last Thursday I said, “We’re either going laugh about this 5 years from now or be completely ashamed.” Sam said, “Probably, the latter.” He’s probably right.
