My Summer Journal
Fire Pit Talk: Balls’ hairs or ball hairs?

July 8th
After a busy day of bands and beer in beautiful downtown Staunton, we settled around the fire-pit for the evening. As is our wont, Adam, Jack*, and I attemped to wrap our heads around some of life’s toughest subjects— why teenagers are assholes, the intricacies of Japan’s economy, the tech explosion in India, whether we would have survived if we had been born hundreds or thousands of years earlier, etc.
And most importantly, when referring to the hairs on mulitple, random balls (the testicle ones), which is grammatically correct: ball hairs or balls’ hairs?
How we went from global, existential, and philosophical topics to ball hairs isn’t important. The truth is we always end up with our minds in the gutter, albeit a rather geeky gutter.
Anyway, the “ball hair” conversation went something like this:
A: (I forget the first part of exactly what he said)…balls’ hairs.
Me: Balls’ hairs? Don’t you mean ‘ball hairs’?
Jack: No, I think he’s right…it’s balls’ hairs. Isn’t it? Balls is plural.
A: Red blue! (Earlier in the day, Adam had tried to talk too fast and said “Red blue” instead of “Redbeard” and Jack and I had mocked him for it so it was now a joke.)
Me: You wouldn’t say ‘tits’ sweat.’ It’s ‘tit sweat.’ And ‘tits’ is plural!
Jack: Ehhh…I still think it ‘balls’ hairs.’ But I could be wrong.
Me: Okay, how about ‘church steeples’? Church steeples are sharp. Not churches’ steeples are sharp.”
Jack: Wait a minute…suppose I was referring to a few specific churches and said, “Those churches’ steeples are sharp’?
Me: That’s different when you are talking about specific churches versus a broad statement about church steeples. It’s ‘church steeples’ just like it’s ‘ball hairs.’
A: I wonder if our neighbors have taken their dog out and heard us talking about the grammatically correct way to say ‘ball hairs?’ Yup, they’re still talking about balls and ball hairs (imitating a disgusted, eavesdropping neighbor).
All of us: 12 year old boy laughter.
Then we discussed at length about whether balls should even have hairs which is a whole other conversation I can’t write about on the internet, and I went to bed.
*Jack is not his real name. He asked me to change it to protect his privacy.
