From: al677@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jerry Cosyn)
Subject: Breach of Premise
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 16:58:27 GMT


     I've been wondering what the doc meant the other day when he said
I should consider the possibility that my premises were in error.
He's a daffy old guffer anyway, with archaic bow ties and laugh lines
on his hands.  He's always making odd, whimsical remarks, absurd non-
sequiturs, sounding like a cross between a Zen master and the Marx
brothers.
 
     Anyway, he got me to talking during our Thursday session and
somehow steered the conversation around to my childhood notion that
cheese snacks were a Constitutional right and should be subsidized by
the government.  I admitted that during most of my childhood I had
been quite young, and he said that was no excuse.  Then he tapped his
teeth with his elbow, in the nervous way he always does before issuing
profundity, and said "Nostrils don't always come in pairs, my boy."
 
     Well, I was flabbergasted, of course, which was quite exciting
for me.  I had been raised in a very strict household, and had never
been permitted to be flabbergasted, and it was only a recent
breakthrough in post-hypnotic embarrassment therapy that had made me
realize that it was socially acceptable.  I wallowed in
flabbergastedness with pagan abandon.  I had never heard of nostrils
occurring singly, or in odd numbers of any sort.  I asked whether he
really meant that nostrils didn't always come in pairs, or was this
merely a cryptic metaphor indicating that duality as a fundamental
criterion of existence was merely an inherent limitation of
consciousness attempting to distinguish the self from the non-self.
His answer was this: "Porcine sales clerks sweat a lot."
 
     I agreed with him, making the matter appear trivial by waving my
hand curtly.  He thought I meant to strike him and, dodging abruptly,
overcompensated and fell out of his chair.  We laughed about the
incident while a large purple bruise appeared on his forehead, but I
knew he was seething with resentment underneath his casual attitude
and textured ceiling.  We drank coffee in silence for a moment, and
then I deftly changed the subject, mentioning that my cuticles were
looking better since I'd taken up entomology.  He immediately became
interested and leaned forward intently, asking whether I found
chloroform to be unduly expensive in these troubled economic times.
 
     I knew I had his interest, and kept the upper hand by laughing
maniacally, alternately nodding and shaking my head, and then stopped
and told him that the economic times were not so much troubled as
diseased, and suggested that large-scale amputations were the only
hope of saving the patient.  He frowned and cleared his throat
theatrically, made a disparaging remark about his sister's choice of
husband, and then told me our time was about up.
 
     As I gathered together my collection of aphids, which he had not
even bothered to look at, I asked him whether he thought we could
begin having cookies with our coffee during these sessions, and that's
when he told me I should consider the possibility that my premises
were in error.  I winked conspiratorially and told him quietly that I
had recently had all my premises checked against the government
standard premise register and they were all within acceptable limits.
As I left I heard him banging his head on the desk and mumbling
something about paperclips, and I knew he wanted to be alone, but I
still wonder what he meant.