By Tim Colin
I recently caught up with Dr. Rumple Stillskin, also known as “The Gold Bug”, and the leading expert on the production of gold. Upon entering the Stillskin tower in Pontiac Michigan I noticed that there were hundreds of infants in the lobby. Several nurses were running around changing diapers and giving bottles to the infants. The entire place looked like a mega daycare center. All the bawling babies was really getting on my nerves and I was glad to get on the express elevator which took me to the top floor where I met with Dr. Stilskin in his very sheik gold leaf covered office.
After I entered the office I walked up to a large gold desk where a short little man with a long pointed nose sat. He was dressed up in cloths that you would find on a garden gnome. The poor little fellow had his head down on his desk and was crying profusely. “What’s wrong little guy?” I asked.
“I’ve got a really bad problem, “the little man sobbed. “You see I’m spending all my money taking care of all these babies and I don’t know what to do. “
“Well, what happened,” I asked? “Surely all these children aren’t yours are they?”
“Of course not,” replied Stillskin. These are all babies I took from mothers in lieu of paying me for making them rich. You see I spent days working my behind off for thousands of women over the years. For, I am an expert at spinning common straw into gold. The only thing I ever required from anyone was that if I made them a pile of gold out of straw then they would have to buy me a box of JUJU Beans.”
I was a bit perplexed. I wondered why a may with such great wealth had to have someone else buy JUJU Beans for him. “Why couldn’t you just go and buy JUJU Beans yourself?” I asked.
“I would buy them myself,” Stillskin replied in an angry voice, “but, they won’t sell JUJU Beans to anyone less than four feet tall and I’m only three feet six inches tall. I told them that I was more like four feet five inches tall but, they said that my long pointy hat doesn’t count. Anyway, I devised this scheme of spinning gold for maidens so they could have a dowry in order to attract a prince charming or, at least a doctor for a husband. Everything was going swell until about nine months ago when the first maiden decided to renege on the deal. I made the gold for her and she would not give me even one single JUJU Bean. “
“For shame,” I declared,” What is this world coming too?”
“For shame indeed,” agreed the little man. “So, I said to her that if she would not give me my fee then I would take her first born and raise it as my own child. Then, after the maiden had her first child I showed up to take it, figuring all the while the girl would break down and pay me in order to keep her baby. But, when she saw me she gladly shoved the baby over to me and said “here, the kid is yours. I can’t stand kids after all and the cost of diapers is really eating away at my dowry. This kid is so expensive now then what is it going to cost me to send him off to medical school so he can become a doctor like his daddy. No, you keep him and spend the money raising him. I and my husband will just stop by once in a while to take him out to dinner. With you footing the bill for raising him we can afford a really decent restaurant."
“So there you have it,” sobbed the little man. “I have hundreds of children to raise and the courts won’t force the parents to give me any financial help. The court said that ’a contract is a contract’, so, I am really hosed. Oh woe is me. And the parents even get visitation rights.” The little man just kept wailing away. It got so that he was worse than the kids downstairs so I was out of there. I grabbed what I thought were gold straws on my way out the door but, when I got home what I thought were gold straws turned out to be just some of the old mans nose hairs that he had clipped off in the lobby. This was a most disturbing day.
