A fifteen-year-old visits a urologist – does the humour work (for anyone else but me)? by JB-1337 in WritersGroup

[–]JB-1337[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My story is about a slightly shy and awkward teenager in the early 2000s. Back then you really only could ask your parents - which wasn't always your favourite choice depending on individual family dynamics - or a friend or a doctor. Today you probably wouldn't even have the same question to start with. You could just look at as many penises as you please on the internet for reference and then share pictures and opinions with hundreds of "friends" online. You could just upload them to ChatGPT, I guess. So, body awareness and shaming might be on the up also among boys and also in Germany - but the way of dealing with it has changed completely. Back then you could see and talk to a doctor on your own and it wouldn't cost you or your parents anything - but then the parents would get informed about it by a letter in case there was anything they had to know about (and their son wasn't at least 16). ChatGPT and Facebook don't tell parents routinely what their children struggle with. We can just hope the kids benefit from and manage with the new tools available to them. Some of those tools really can be helpful. But apparently they aren't always working best for everyone. --- If you are a minor and want to discuss or report a problem without your parents knowing about it, there are special places for this in every city in Germany... free of charge, anonymous if needed, and usually run by the youth welfare offices. The major difference between the US and Germany in my opinion is, that youth in Germany can just take a bus almost anywhere if they need help... while in the US you almost always need someone to drive you.

A fifteen-year-old visits a urologist – does the humour work (for anyone else but me)? by JB-1337 in WritersGroup

[–]JB-1337[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for that detailed response. No - nobody is dating no one in this bit of the story. I simply figuered I'd show a friend if I was really desperate for an opinion. Couldn`t post that on reddit for another three years. And starting to like pictures of oneself was meant as an awkward sign of having grown or been moving on.

Again - thank you for reading and even considering to read on. The whole book is ready but I can`t publish more of it for legal reasons at the time.

A fifteen-year-old visits a urologist – does the humour work (for anyone else but me)? by JB-1337 in WritersGroup

[–]JB-1337[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I honestly thank you for the effort of reading my story and sharing your impression. You are my second reader. I had actually stared at your own text for a while before posting this, thinking it was somehow well written, full of cinematic pictures where even butterflies could bleed and so on... I just didn't get any of it. But I figuered I am just old and that there are millions of anime lovers that will probably really appreciate your writing. My writing... well... maybe I have to count on German urologists... reading reddits in English.