The expression below appears in this book, widely available in Canadian bookstores.
“The wrinkles dropped right out of my bag.” Bag here means scrotum. Yes, it’s a vulgar expression. Folk sayings are often made up by men at work. When working guys trade raucous humour, it is seldom in the language of evening prayer service. So the fuddy-duddy bluestockings who wish to gasp in offended huffings and puffings and to shake the wagging finger of disapproval every time human anatomy is referred to in common speech, well, such little Geiger counters of sensitivity ought to stop reading this page right now, learn nothing, and retire to sit quietly in the parlour with their personally autographed copy of Holy Writ. The rest of us adults can enjoy this intriguing expression about fear. “The wrinkles dropped right out of my bag” means you were a very frightened man and you produced one of the typical physiological signs of male fear. The cremaster muscle, suspended under the testicles, retracts and the scrotum is drawn up close to the body. CREMASTERIC REFLEX This cremasteric reflex happens when men are very cold, during the fight-or-flight response to shock, fear or severe stress, and just prior to orgasm. It acts to keep the testes warm, to protect them from injury, and to increase the propulsive force of seminal emission by decreasing the distance the ejaculate must travel during orgasm. The reflex can also be produced by stroking the inside part of a man’s thigh in a downward direction. The normal response in males is a contraction of the cremasteric muscle that pulls up the scrotum and testis on the side stroked.
However the folk saying is not totally correct. Although they may seem to, the wrinkles, the muscular corrugations of the scrotal sack, do not in fact disappear during cremasteric contraction. OH NO ! NOT A JOKE ! Perhaps I can toss in here an old, hoary medical-school joke? A man goes to a doctor and presents with a large abnormal mass in his throat. The patient tells the doctor it took him weeks to get up the courage to enter the doctor’s office because he is terrified of medicine and of doctors in particular, due to an unfortunate childhood incident. The doctor palpates the mass in his throat, determines its motility, assures himself that it is not merely something swallowed, a bolus of compacted food lodged in the throat. Nor is it to the physician’s satisfaction a goitre. The patient’s thyroid is just dandy. Finally, after exhausting his diagnostic prowess, the doctor sighs and prepares to take a biopsy, a tissue sample of the throat lump. He sends it off to the pathology lab to determine precisely what kinds of cells comprise this mysterious lump. A few days later the quaking patient sits before him in the consulting room. And the doctor states his diagnosis: “Mr. Jones, you were frightened to come to my consulting room. That lump is the result of the most powerful cremasteric reflex known to medical literature!” Okay, it’s not that funny a joke. But it helps medical students remember the cremaster muscle. © 2005
Hundreds of links to more of my word entries are available below.
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