Little Johnny Had a Mouthful
Johnny cracked a tooth the other day. A wisdom tooth. He had been cleaning out the wood chipper and couldn’t resist the urge to go in for a little taste of sticky red goo. The tooth should have been removed years ago but he’d wanted to get through college with them all intact. Deep down he dreamed of one day retiring to a position high atop a mountain where many a monk would revere his words.
So of course he went down to the local barbershop posthaste to have it attended to.
“Good mornin’.”
“How do, young man? What’ll it be?”
“I have this tooth, you see…” And Johnny explained the situation to the barber.
“This is a barbershop son. You have to get a hair cut.”
“I see. Good up sale. Good up sale. All right, then. I’ll have a haircut and a tooth removed. Why not throw in a bloodletting, too? I’ve never had one of those. What do you do? Just lay out the leeches on my arms or something? Hey, I don’t need to get naked, do I?”
“I only do haircuts, boy.” The barber walked to the door and held it open. “You have to go to a dentist. And then a psychiatrist. Good day.”
Nostrils flared. Forehead furrowed. Johnny got stressed.
“You don’t have to get condescending.”
Johnny grabbed the barber by his marshmallowy face and pushed it half way through the plate glass door, slicing both ears clean off. His bifocals fell to the ground and smashed to pieces.
“What the hell do you have the barber pole for? Do you even know what the stripes mean?”
“Khoogh ghok?” Barber replied with blood, sweat, and tears streaming down his face.
“Oh, this is just freakin’ useless. You’re a real piece of work, you know that? I ought to call the BBB on you.” Johnny felt a sudden twang of guilt. “Sorry about your glasses.”
Outside, Johnny decided he could no longer handle the pain and took a seat at the café. He reached into his own mouth and from the spot where the tooth should have been he pulled out a hard jagged piece of charcoal. He sniffed it–hickory–and then recalled having had his wisdom pulled out just last week. He laughed at the foolishness of it and flipped the nasty wet charcoal into a police officer’s coffee cup.