A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor

Fatherhood Blues
Saturday, April 4, 2009

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Human sperm are very small
Five microns, that’s about all
They are just a cell with a dangly tail
They’re just a fraction of the ovum
But still you’ve got to love em
And they’re produced in the testes of the male
Beneath their shiny domes
They contain your chromosomes
And the tail can kick just like a leg
O nothing could be fina
Than to swim up a vagina
And make a rendezvous with an egg.

CHORUS

The sperm has one ambition
And that is to gain admission
To the female reproductive canal
And once he gets in it
He swims a millimeter a minute
Along with forty million of his pals.

He’s a cell but he’s no boob
When he sees the Fallopian tube
He goes crazy and swims in a figure-8
About ten-thousand times
And those female enzymes
Keep egging him on to penetrate.

CHORUS

A few sperm advance,
And do their little dance
And only one gets through the egg membrane
And the merger of those two
That’s what lead to you
So be thankful that your folks did not abstain

That old man in the garage
Once let loose a great barrage
And though he now is ancient and infirm
And his breath is bad
Children he’s your dad
Because he contributed those sperm

You can get it from a bank
Or from Bill or John or Frank
But when it comes to fatherhood there is one guy to thank.
He was young he was dumb
And when things began to hum
He did not withdraw
He went on to be your pa
And that, my darlings, is where you all came from