Enhancement!

There's an informercial that comes on late-night television for a "male enhancement". The cutting edge of the commercial is a fairly slinky woman interviewing a suspiciously well-sorted population of couples, and the man always reports that "it got bigger". We all know what "it" is - you know, der Frankenheimer, what Kurt Vonnegut once called the "Old Avenger". The info-people on TV refer to it as "that special male body part", which confuses me because a great many of my male body parts are pretty special to me. Where would I be without my basal ganglia, for example?

But what if the makers of the male enhancement couldn't guarantee which body part would be enhanced? Suppose the question wasn't "Did it [der Frankenheimer] get bigger" but "What got bigger"?

The slinky woman sidles up to a couple and asks die Frage, and the guy says "Oh yeah, my Isles of Langerhans are freaking HUGE! They could beat up Pee Wee Herman all by themselves. The size of freaking raisins, look at those things." Or, "My Ampulla of Vater is toyt! Toyt like a toyger! I can ze valnuts crack mit it!" Or, "My pyloric valve can pass a Volkswagen Bug, though it's more comfortable if it doesn't have the rooftop luggage rack." Or, (one for the road) "That aint a duodenum, son, that's a veritable python. Stand back, it strikes on occasion."

All of this has currency for me because I have an unexplained bulge in my neck that could, for all I know, be the result of a male enhancement (notwithistanding the fact that I haven't actually taken any male enhancements). I noticed it about two months ago when I was shaving, a decided muscular-feeling bulge on the right side of my neck, sort of like Ahnold-Neck only on just one side, and not flared all the way down to the shoulder. But when prodded, the bulge feels like hard, taut muscle, so one can't help but wonder if I didn't somehow accidentally ingest a male enhancement that through some terrible miscarriage of medical justice went on to give my neck a powerful, throbbing erection. It would figger, wunnit?

I'm about 95% sure it's just a pulled muscle. My neck enjoys being involved in activities like digging ditches and moving bales of hay. Even though the neck muscles seem univnolved with such upper-body tasks, I occasionally pull muscles in my neck. Once I was digging a hole to bury a largish dead steer and pulled a muscle in my neck so severely I could only look out the left window of my car for weeks. So I figure this Mystery Swelling is just a bulked-up pulled muscle. It might not be, and I really should have the doctor look at it, but that's my theory.

And in case you're wondering, it got bigger.