These spots too-quickly evolved into a nightly puddle of semen that constantly soaked the crotch of my pajama bottoms. My nuts were now more clearly of the variety 'walnuts', too. All of these physical changes in me were becoming my own very private nightmare. I began to routinely visually check the every-changing status of these rapid physical changes that were happening to my body. I usually performed my inspection while I was seated in the outhouse. Both fascinated and yet scared, I gradually observed that my 'walnuts' were changing into - err... well.. something resembling something more like two pullet eggs. The bag of skin surrounding them was definitely getting bigger too I'd noticed, but it also seemed to be lagging behind what was actually needed. These two 'eggs' of mine were forcing the basket of skin containing them to actually stretch to accommodate them. Understand that I was clearly not at all OK with what was happening - not one bit. Once, I even held the two eggs in the palm of my hand, and lifted them heavenward to offer God a trade-of-sorts:

"If you'd make me taller, you can make these smaller - PLEASE?"

He of course did not on either count. I wondered if perhaps God was punishing me for my sin of gluttony - I knew that I was rushing through my early morning chores to get to the breakfast table faster. Part of my strategy was to deliberately 'not see' a good number of the eggs in the hen house. I mean, there were so many of them anyway. I wondered if He'd grown these 'eggs' inside of me so that I'd be forever reminded of my sin.

And I began to secretly change my own sheets often. Thankfully there was always huge piles of laundry to be done, especially on a farm, and I naively hoped maybe my mother wouldn't notice. Certainly by the age of 10, I was awaking daily in a virtual lake of sticky semen - so much that it was soaking through into the straw mattress. Just changing the sheets wasn't very effectively concealing my problem anymore and I was one very worried boy. Moreover, there was this odd ammonia-like odor that began to emanate from the now chronically-damp mattress.

God bless my mother though. One morning she came into my bedroom to get me up, just as she'd always done. On this particular morning, however, she paused - and then sat down on my bed.

"Peter - der ist ein smell in here. Varh ist dis coming from?"

The ruse was up and I felt instantly ashamed. My eyes started to tear as I threw back the bedcovers to show her all of my secrets - my punishments from God. I was frightened, frustrated and also totally ready to fez up and finally be out with the truth.

"I'm sorry .. I'm SO sorry.. ," I whimpered.

She unhurriedly took in the entire scene with her eyes - both the obviously fresh mess I'd created during the previous night as well as my prominent 'new' male anatomy which at that moment was quite visible through the wetted fabric of my pajama bottoms.

"Ooohhh...... my ...... ," she said. " I see vat ist der problem..."

But to my utter surprise, she only smiled kindly and began to stroke my head in a soothing manner, and continued:

"Dis ist OK mein Peter. Dis ist OK. You ist yust ein big boy now!"

Reflecting back on that moment in my history, I realize that she had a thorough knowledge of - well - the special nature of the men in her immediate family, I think- and their 'nocturnal specimens' as well, though she never spoke it aloud. She simply accepted the facts of the matter just as they were. And since she was not a worldly or educated woman herself, she may well have not even known that this was anything unusual or way outside of 'the prevailing norms'- which it most definitely was.

I do distinctly remember her words that followed, though....

"You're JUST like your vater AND your bruder, Zechariah! Always know daat Gott - He lovz you now - just the vay daat you ist. For His own divine reasons, He made all die menschen in dis family to be... ah, vell... very potent - see? I vill yust change your bed every morgen, yust like I do your bruder's....."

"And Peter, you must never, never touch your... your "little Johann". To make yourself do dis ting wit your hands, do you hear me? It ist against Gott's law. Dat you do dis in your sleep, dat ist ein normal ting for a boy - dat you cannot help yourself. OK? Do you tink that you understand me?"

"Yes, Mama...."

And so ended what was to be the very first - and last - of any 'sex education' that I was to ever receive from either of my parents.

"Den Gut, Peter. I vill make you some more mattresses. I vill change dem, too, to give dem a chanze to dry outzide. So you get up and do your chores now, OK?"

"JUST like your father and brother?"

"Very potent...?"

"My brother's..."

Just what was she telling me? I mulled over these verbal tidbits of information as I quickly got dressed. Well, at least I now knew that my 'thing' apparently DID have a name - a "little Johann" she'd called it. But that was all my mother ever said about the matter, and the one and only time it was ever to be spoken of again. She did make two new straw mattresses for me and began to change my bedding regularly thereafter, just as she'd said she would. That practice continued right up until I left home for college. Unknown to me, she was already well-accustomed to the copious amounts of nocturnal emissions that apparently flowed in that house on a nightly basis. Apparently she'd been doing the same special daily chore for my own brother, for probably years now in fact ... •