I sat in the kitchen with my sister who had just had her 18th birthday. We were preparing a small meal for the two of us because our parents were away for a couple months.
She looked over to me and said "Hey, this might be weird, but I've got something to ask you."
"Oh? Okay then go on," I replied.
"Well, I want to know the size of a penis. Just an average man's penis," she said going red in the face.
"Uhm why on earth do you need to know that?"
"Well, I was with a guy the other night and we were doing it... You know." Her words came out more awkward than I could ever have imagined. "And he told me before that he had a big one. But it didn't look very big. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to hurt his feelings but to be honest I was a little disappointed."
"Why are you telling your brother this? Don't you think it's a little weird?" I ask her.
"Well, who else am I meant to ask about this. Not Dad, you know what he's like. So that leaves you," she says, looking into my eyes with curiosity.
"Yeah, true I suppose." A sigh escapes my mouth. "Okay then what do you want to know?"
"Just how big a normal penis is, I guess. That way I'll know if he was lying to me."
I feel my heart racing in my chest. It shouldn't be. It's a perfectly innocent question. I think. I hope.
"To tell you the truth I don't actually know. It's never been something I've been too obsessed over." It's true. I didn't know at the time what an average penis was. I knew I had a moderate dick from the reactions I got off anyone who saw it. But porn had warped my perception of what I thought was average. "Nothing a quick google search can't solve though."
I took out my phone opening an incognito tab on the web browser. I looked up to my sister before entering my search, she caught my gaze and quickly looked away. Had she been looking at me?
I typed 'what is the average size of a penis' with some difficulty as my hands shook slightly.
Straight away a box of text appeared at the top of the page with a line about halfway through it in bold. It read 'on average the length of a penis is between 5.1 - 5.5 inches'. And by reading a little further down I discovered the average girth was only 4 inches.
Shock filled my body. Is that all. Is that all most people have. I hadn't ever measured my penis before, but I knew it was a lot bigger than that. I could feel my face going red, so I showed my sister the phone to take her eyes of my face.
"Well, he definitely lied. He wasn't even that big. I don't think," she said moving over to one of the kitchen drawers and opening it. "Ah! Here it is." She held up a tailor's tape. She bought it back to where we were sat and started to extend it just past the 5-inch mark.
"Yeah, he wasn't big at all. Not even average." She looked at the tape measure in her hands. "Penises are kind of pathetic really. I thought a normal penis would be bigger than that."
Shock still possesses my face. "Why do you look so surprised," my sister asked. "You're little widdler not even 5 inches." She spoke in a mocking tone and held the extended tape measure up to my face.
"No, it's not that. Just that... Well. 5 inches doesn't seem like much at all does it. I was expecting it to be more." My voice was shaky.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so." She still had my phone in her hands and was scrolling down through the page. "Oo! Look at this." She turned the Phone to show me the screen. "You can put in your measurements, and it will tell you how rare your dick is. That's fucking hilarious."
"Ha, no way that's so dumb." Curiosity plagued my mind as a genuine laugh escaped my mouth. "Put in the average we found and see what it says."
"Okay then." She paused to type in the numbers. "Here, if you have a 5.5-inch penis then you are in the 50th percentile." That confirmed it then. That was normal. Hardly longer than my hand. I thought that everyone could jerk off with two hands and that I was lucky to have some extra space on top of that. I guess I was wrong.
"That just doesn't seem right. Like its barely bigger than my palm," I said holding up my hand so she could see.
"When has the internet ever lied." She laughed at her own joke. "I wonder what the top 10% is. Any guesses before I try it?" she asked.
I thought to myself 'It's going to have to be a lot bigger then 5 inches surely. I have no idea how long I am but it's bigger than that.' I glance at the tailor's tape. 'Top 10% has to be a lot bigger surely.'
"Okay I'll play your game. I guess 8.5 inches is the top 10%."
"Ha you aren't even close! It's way less. It's only 6.4 inches. Before if you asked me to guess the average I would have said about 6.5. So that really puts things into perspective." She sighs, "pretty disappointing really," she takes the tailors tape again rolling it out to 6.5 inches. "It's still not that big and that's the top 10% of all men."