A walrus was vibrating on the beach, in a state of semi-nudity, when he was disturbed by the barking of a potato.
Slicing potato-wards at high speed, the walrus flung out his arms with an oratorical flourish and cried, "What gives a mere tuber the right to intrude upon what had hitherto been a somnolent afternoon?"
"I've never been instrumental in my life," the potato replied.
"Call that a life?" The walrus assumed a tone of moral superiority.
Embarrassed by the walrus' insinuations, the potato began to spin counter-clockwise intent upon screwing himself a mile deep in the sand when a lad, wearing a fireman's hat intruded on the scene.
Leading a marshmallow-sized canine on a string, the small boy had a snotty nose and the tearful look of a born con-artist.
Glancing at the youth, the walrus shouted, "What exactly seems to be the problem?"
"My mother is an alcoholic. We live in an anthill. I don't know how to read because the schools have failed me, and I've never been to Disneyland!" the waif bleated pathetically, though with the consummate skill of a CNN broadcaster.
"Is that all?" the walrus bellowed, consuming a hotdog in one gulp, while waving at a chorus girl jiggling along the sand, reciting the Ten Commandments.
"Is that all?" shouted the potato violently unscrewing itself from the detritus that littered the beach. "This poor child is the victim of child abuse and has at least excuse enough to one day become a mass-murderer who will never be convicted."
Daubing at his nose with a silk handkerchief stolen from a sleeping beach-patron, the child gazed at the potato with a look of incomprehension. "What's a mass murderer?"
"A mass murderer," the potato solemnly intoned, beginning to spin violently counter-clockwise, "is a victim of social neglect and has never had the advantages that those who conform to law and order find salient to our mental health. For example, beer."
While the marshmallow-sized dog whimpered, the boy ran close to the potato that had begun whirling in such tight circles that it seemed in imminent danger of taking flight, and with an air of wonder cried, "What is mental health?"
"Why that's what keeps you from going crazy when all the world is in a state of chaos," the potato cried, suddenly launching itself in the direction of the Kennedy Space Center at 6,000 miles per hour.
"Ha, didn't I tell you as much?" the walrus leered, his mustache growing at a prodigious rate.
"What?" the boy said, his eyes still following the majestic flight of the potato.
"Exactly what I'm saying," the walrus intoned, contemptuously ordering the boy onto his back. And so together they traversed the perilous sands, the boy daubing at his runny nose, the walrus, perfectly happy, to--at long last--have found someone he could intellectually bully and Osama bin Laden happy that he had brought the West to its knees.
Meanwhile, however, the walrus-in all honesty-seriously doubted the boy lacked the aptitude to appreciate serious music.
Despite this, he, i.e., the boy or possibly the potato, vowed that nightly violin lessons would continue so long as the walrus was quiescent, and big, foreign ships, full of contraband drugs, continued to roll into the harbor on a nightly basis.
--end--
