The Father of Teeth

Text for today: I Pulp xciii-cxii

It was almost certainly not around this time, however, that a serious young man approached the Father of Teeth and prevailed upon his attention. He waited three days in the pouring rain with hardly a muscle moving except when the chill caused his molars to chatter. Meanwhile the Father of Teeth sat ensconced in hideous meditation with his seventh most serene rictus glistening like compromised tar.

On the fourth day his eyes opened, transfixing the serious young man like a pair of bloodshot toothpicks. "What do you want?" asked the Father of Teeth.
"I seek knowledge," pronounced the serious young man.
"I am not a library," said the Father of Teeth.
"I seek to become your apprentice," proclaimed the serious young man.
"I am not a tradesperson," said the Father of Teeth.
"I seek to learn and improve," propounded the serious young man.
"I am not a schoolmaster," said the Father of Teeth, "nor yet a mistress, if you should happen to bend that way."
"This catechism is for novices," said the serious young man; "ultimately, of course I seek wisdom and insight."
"You wouldn't know what to do with them," said the Father of Teeth.
"Your mask of pedagogic flippancy is most instructive," said the serious young man; "surely wisdom and insight are ends in themselves."
"Ultimately, there is no such thing as an end in itself," said the Father of Teeth; "everything that is mortal and attainable leads on to something else, usually unexpected and frequently undesirable. As for what is immortal and unattainable, that would be the Creator of the universe Himself, and you only have to look at the universe to see what the consequences are."
"Then," said the serious young man with determination, "I seek wisdom and insight and whatever lies beyond."
"Very good," said the Father of Teeth; "now when you have worked out what wisdom you require and what you wish to see into, you may possibly find yourself able to discover on your own account whatever is lying beyond."

By this point the serious young man had become seriously annoyed; but just as his breath caught and his fists tightened and his glandular endowments began pumping with adrenal ferocity, the Father of Teeth wagged an admonishing digit, whose warning was no less salutary for the stalagmitic boles about its joints and the serrated deviations of its manicure. "Before you do anything hasty," said the Father of Teeth, "remember that one step on the path to the delusion of wisdom is knowing how to exercise the delusion of choice. For example, there are now at least two potential universes which are contingent upon a point not far removed from the present moment: a universe in which you are badly chewed up, and a universe in which you depart the scene intact. Regrettably, such are the limitations of the present universe, that only one of these potentials can possibly come to fruition."

This insight so intrigued the serious young man that he became frozen to the spot with contemplative indecision. After a month or two it became necessary to prop him up with sticks, and later it was thought wise to seal him into a transparent case and apply the techniques of preliminary mummification. For the Father of Teeth had omitted to mention a third contingent universe, in which the serious young man was unable to decide between the other two and thereby became an improving public spectacle, the admission fees to which were insightfully collected and wisely administered by the Father of Teeth.