My wife and I are expecting  a son  in September. Because  circumcision is no longer the easy and automatic decision it once was, I have been researching it and that is how I found your excellent website.

  When my son is born  I want to make sure that he gets the same kind of circumcision I have , with  his foreskin and frenulum  completely cut away and the bare glans showing all the time. I have two young nephews and their circumcisions are not complete and look unsatisfactory to me. I even wonder if it could be a problem for these boys eventually. I was born at a time when nearly every male in America got circumcised after birth; hence, growing up in the 50's & 60's  all my friends had the same clean-cut, tightly-circumcised look. 

  As a young boy 7 to 10 years old, I took swimming lessons at the "Y" (no swimsuits), went to Cub Scout camp for 3 summers (plenty of skinny-dipping, showers and head-to-toe tick inspections), and starting at age 11 showered at school every day, and I never saw a penis that looked significantly different from my own. (We all wore crew cuts in those days so you could say that we boys were close-cropped at both ends!)

  Circumcision was so universal, I only knew  about it  because I had a cousin about my own age who for some reason was uncut.  His family visited us  every Christmas and summer. Every time we took our showers together I noted the unusual "elephant trunk" shape of his penis. (It was when I asked my mother about this that I first learned about circumcision.)  The loose skin at the tip was often red and inflamed looking. One morning when he pulled off his pajamas, his foreskin was grotesquely puffy and he said it had been itching the whole night. Whenever he stood at the toilet the skin would interfere with his stream and the pee would spray in all directions. I was afraid my mother would think I'd done it! His boners had a tight and bent look.

  The Christmas that we were 9 or 10, on the night that his family arrived I got a big surprise when my cousin took off his pants.  His penis was cleanly circumcised with no trace of foreskin remaining, and a bright pink "cigar band" scar behind the exposed glans just like I had!  It looked HEALTHY with no trace of inflammation, a real change for the better.  In the shower he happily explained that he had been circumcised right after his last visit and before re-entering school.  I remember it sounded a little scary and painful, but he was grinning from ear to ear as he described it.  He had been looking forward to showing it to me. Then he said the same words that others have used: "I FEEL LIKE A NEW MAN!

  All this made me feel very good about being circumcised (and glad it had been done to me as a baby!), and I feel that way to this day.

  STEVEN