When I was high school, I had a good friend named Kevin. Back then he was dating this girl named Kayla and he was totally in love with her . . . he even told me he wanted to eventually marry her. I liked her. She was always very kind to me. They were together for over a year and everything seemed all right. And then one day, apropos of nothing, she unceremoniously broke it off with him. Kevin was crestfallen. I’d never seen him so sad!

Kevin was friends with my dad and would sometimes turn to him for advice. Now he needed my dad’s sage-like wisdom more than ever before. He said, “Can you ask your dad if I can come over and talk to him about Kayla? I’m really having trouble moving on . . .”

I went to my dad and said as much. He was empathetic. He said: “Of course I’ll talk to Kevin. Bring him over.” And so I summoned Kevin.

I remember Kevin coming over one weekday night. My dad was down in the basement watching TV. Kevin sat down and told us the whole thing from beginning to end . . . and such was his love for this girl, and such was the grief he felt from her absence that he even began to tear up as he finished his tale. I know he was embarrassed about that, but my dad comforted him. At that point my dad was on his third marriage, so when he spoke of love and love lost, you knew he knew what he was talking about. But Kevin, who was all of 17 years old, still struggled to swallow any outcome where Kayla did not return to him. He kept saying, “Do you think she’ll change her mind? She has to, right?”

Finally my dad said: “Kevin, I like you a lot, and I can see you’re really hurting. I wish I could tell you that Kayla will eventually change her mind and want to be with you again, but the truth is that only Kayla knows what Kayla is going to do. So I’m going to give you some advice that I wish someone had given me when I was your age, which is this: Cut your penis off and you’ll be a millionaire by the time you’re 30.”