Radio Tapio.

From PRX.

Dear Diary.

6th grade.

February 14th.

1991.

I am really depressed.

How could she break up with me?

Mom, you can't read this.

I had a dad who was a complete...

Extremely religious person.

My favorite photograph of my dad, which I can look at as I'm talking to you, is him holding me after he has circumcised me.

When Noam Osband says his father circumcised him, he doesn't mean he threw him a brist or took him to a doctor.

No, he means his father did the actual snipping.

And Noam wasn't the only kid in the neighborhood who went under his father's ceremonial knife.

In fact, he would do them sometimes in the community.

So sometimes my dad will come home after he'd done one and then it's like, oh, we're all going to go out to the Oralatry, the Forskintry.

This is not a joke at all.

By the garage, and we'd go out there, and he'd have the Forskint and a hankerchief, and we'd have a spoon, and we'd dig up dirt, and he'd hand the hankerchief to one of us.

So we could, you know, lay the Forskint in the ground.

This was normal.

Being raised as an Orthodox Jew, meant situations like this were run of the mill for Noam.

...