Julie Benz

An alternative to spanking, courtesy of "Dexter’s" Julie Benz

One reason people love coming down here is that you get to hear famous people, the same beings who would step over you if you were bleeding to death in the street (unless we’re talking about Mr. T or Sean Penn) share funky little childhood stories with us, a roomful of strangers.

Why they do this, I have no idea. Maybe they think it humanizes them. In rare cases, such as that of Julie Benz (known as "Angel’s" Darla) it does. Benz plays a sociopath’s love interest on Showtime’s "Dexter." Lacking much in the way of things to ask her or anyone else other than Michael C. Hall, an enterprising person dug into her press kit bio.

He noticed that Benz once had designs upon becoming a hot and sexy doctor, but gave it up after she witnessed a surgery. Pressed, she volunteered the charming details.

"I was 13 when I watched a real surgery," she said. "It’s pretty traumatic, and" — here’s where it got interesting — "it was hemorrhoid surgery."

Hello, nurse.

Oddly, this trivia sliver sat on the sidelines for most of the session, as if teenage audiences at butt surgeries are as common as a "High School Musical" rerun. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one bothered by that tease, so later, Benz was asked to elaborate, and she obliged us with a story that left a few of us, um, clenching.

"My father is a surgeon, and I got in trouble for something. And my parents are kind of quirky, a little, and as a challenge, my father said, ’Okay. You can be grounded for two weeks, or you could sit here and watch hemorrhoid surgery,’ because he was watching a tape of it," she explained. "And there was a dance that weekend that I wanted to go to, and I had a date with a boy. So I thought, ’I can sit here and watch the hemorrhoid surgery, no biggie.’"

"Yeah. That changed my life forever."