When I was about five, I had four main creative building-type toys at my disposal: Lincoln Logs, an Erector set (my dad’s from the 50’s), Lego blocks, and Tinkertoys.

With the Lincoln Logs, I’d build a little fort, then put my German toy soldiers on its roof (you knew they were bad because they were gray), then fashion a catapult and chuck logs at them. The Erector set was mainly for stuff for which I could use the battery-operated motor, like drawbridges and Ferris Wheels.

The Legos were mostly used to build houses.  There wasn’t much else to build, since this was way before all the sissy pre-made theme crap.

Which brings us to Tinkertoys.  If you’re not old enough to remember, the sticks used to be made of wood (they’re now made of plastic).  They plug into joints with sockets.  I found Tinkertoys to be kind of ho-hum.  There weren’t a lot of cool things you could build with them.

So, one day as a bored little kid, I thought I’d try to make my mom laugh.  It’d be hilarious is she saw me with Tinkertoy sticks coming out of me all over.

So I stuck various lengths of Tinkertoy sticks in different places: my shoes, my ear, my pants, etc.  Oh yeah, and my mouth.  I put the biggest stick available, the purple stick, probably a foot long, in my mouth.

So I’m walking down the hall, a bunch of colorful dowels sticking out of my little body, to my baby sister’s room where my mom was.  She was gonna laugh so hard.

I got just to the end of the hall, where my sister’s room was – and tripped.  The floor came up fast and I had no time to react.

I remember each end of the purple stick hitting the floor and the back of my throat.  There was a tear and horrible pain.  My throat, not the floor.

Needless to say, she wasn’t amused.

It was all okay in the end, just a little blood and a lot of crying and humiliation, though I can still feel, with my tongue, that little butthole-like scar back there.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Skip prop comedy and tell a joke instead.

 

SIDE NOTE: I wonder if they switched to plastic sticks because of dipshits like me.  You know, more bend, less back-of-throat rippin’ and tearin’.