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Deep Thoughts
At first I thought, if I were
Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist,"
because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought,
if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just
looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay,"
then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take
an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw get outta here,"
and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
One thing kids like is to be
tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland,
but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh,
no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried
and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty
good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it
was getting pretty late.
If I lived back in the wild west
days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering
iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey,
look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing,
and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's
right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice."
Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had
made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably
hit them up for a free drink.
I bet when the Neanderthal kids
would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, "Don't
forget the thick, heavy brows." Then they would all get embarrassed
because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and they'd
get mad and eat the snowman.
Fear can sometimes
be a useful emotion. For instance, let's say you're an astronaut
on the moon and you fear that your partner has been turned into
Dracula. The next time he goes out for the moon pieces, wham!, you
just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on
the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think
again, bat man."
The people in the village were real
poor, so none of the children had any toys. But this one little
boy had gotten an old enema bag and filled it with rocks, and he
would go around and whap the other children across the face with
it. Man, I think my heart almost broke. Later the boy came up and
offered to give me the toy. This was too much! I reached out my
hand, but then he ran away. I chased him down and took the enema
bag. He cried a little, but that's the way of these people.
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