The Father of Teeth
Text for today: Enamel xxviii-xxxix
It was certainly not at this time that the Father of Teeth entered prison, although the police of several counties had requested his assistance in connection with certain painful indentations in the buttocks of various local luminaries. While wandering the corridors and engaging in repartee, the Father of Teeth encountered a Reformer who was lecturing the prisoners on the choices which had brought them to their present unpleasant station in life.
"There are events," the Reformer proclaimed, "and we respond to those events. We cannot choose the events that affect us, but we can choose how we let them affect us."
"A most flattering philosophy," said the Father of Teeth, "if a little neglectful of that quirk of cerebral electro-chemistry which brought you to your present exalted state of moral hygiene."
"The freedom of the human will," said the Reformer, "is limited but absolute in moral matters, and your biochemical aspersions are neither provable nor constructive."
"I never said they were," replied the Father of Teeth. "I said merely that you flatter yourself by attaching any more moral significance to your business as a Reformer than you attach to your business as a pink-skinned bipedal endomorph with hereditary flat feet and a predilection for preaching - a predilection which, if I am not mistaken, you inherited from your great-great-great grandmother, who herself spent some little time in prison. Her husband had her put away for standing on street corners and proclaiming that women should speak in chuch and be permitted to own real estate."
"I know nothing of that," said the Reformer; "I made my own choice of career because I was sickened at the endless cycle of crime and punishment."
"Your career, then, is a physiological event," said the Father of Teeth. "The nobility of your nausea surely does you credit; but you will at least admit that other inhabitants of this prison may have been sickened by different things, such as the inequitable distribution of wealth or the continuing existence of an uncongenial spouse."
"Tastes may differ," said the Reformer stiffly, "but one can always choose one's reaction."
"Bravo," said the Father of Teeth; "of course, for the sake of motivating and thereby redeeming these several hundred listening unfortunates, you can name the last three occasions on which, given motive, method and opportunity, you have yourself avoided becoming a felon by means of will alone?"
"That isn't the point," said the Reformer; "and anyway, if I can't help doing what I'm doing, why are you standing there arguing with me?"
"Because I can't help it," said the Father of Teeth; whereupon the Reformer leapt upon him with a shriek and tried to gouge out his tongue from the rear. The Father of Teeth was rescued, with some small but necessary violence, by half a dozen burly prison warders, who had heard the Reformer preach on any number of occasions and couldn't help disliking his continual implications that they were stuck in this lousy job by choice.
It was certainly not at this time that the Father of Teeth entered prison, although the police of several counties had requested his assistance in connection with certain painful indentations in the buttocks of various local luminaries. While wandering the corridors and engaging in repartee, the Father of Teeth encountered a Reformer who was lecturing the prisoners on the choices which had brought them to their present unpleasant station in life.
"There are events," the Reformer proclaimed, "and we respond to those events. We cannot choose the events that affect us, but we can choose how we let them affect us."
"A most flattering philosophy," said the Father of Teeth, "if a little neglectful of that quirk of cerebral electro-chemistry which brought you to your present exalted state of moral hygiene."
"The freedom of the human will," said the Reformer, "is limited but absolute in moral matters, and your biochemical aspersions are neither provable nor constructive."
"I never said they were," replied the Father of Teeth. "I said merely that you flatter yourself by attaching any more moral significance to your business as a Reformer than you attach to your business as a pink-skinned bipedal endomorph with hereditary flat feet and a predilection for preaching - a predilection which, if I am not mistaken, you inherited from your great-great-great grandmother, who herself spent some little time in prison. Her husband had her put away for standing on street corners and proclaiming that women should speak in chuch and be permitted to own real estate."
"I know nothing of that," said the Reformer; "I made my own choice of career because I was sickened at the endless cycle of crime and punishment."
"Your career, then, is a physiological event," said the Father of Teeth. "The nobility of your nausea surely does you credit; but you will at least admit that other inhabitants of this prison may have been sickened by different things, such as the inequitable distribution of wealth or the continuing existence of an uncongenial spouse."
"Tastes may differ," said the Reformer stiffly, "but one can always choose one's reaction."
"Bravo," said the Father of Teeth; "of course, for the sake of motivating and thereby redeeming these several hundred listening unfortunates, you can name the last three occasions on which, given motive, method and opportunity, you have yourself avoided becoming a felon by means of will alone?"
"That isn't the point," said the Reformer; "and anyway, if I can't help doing what I'm doing, why are you standing there arguing with me?"
"Because I can't help it," said the Father of Teeth; whereupon the Reformer leapt upon him with a shriek and tried to gouge out his tongue from the rear. The Father of Teeth was rescued, with some small but necessary violence, by half a dozen burly prison warders, who had heard the Reformer preach on any number of occasions and couldn't help disliking his continual implications that they were stuck in this lousy job by choice.
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