The Economics of Teeth

I hope Magoo never learns that it’s possible to sell his organs for money… or candy.

Lately his main revenue stream comes from the secretive but highly lucrative tooth market. He yanks one out, processes it, makes it available for purchase and he finds no shortage of fairy buyers, willing to supply him with income in exchange for the goods.

The money is used for three things.

1. Counting – Magoo stacks and counts his money like Scrooge McDuck
2. Planting choking hazard landmines – Where will Wanda be most likely to find this quarter so I can cry when she gets her hands on it?
3. Buying Candy
4. Attempting to buy useless junk from the machines at the front of the grocery store.

Recently while I was checking out at Safeway, he plugged “twenty-five cents” into a machine full of plastic bubbles containing rubber thumbtacks or something equally life-changing. Pennies, a dime, a couple of nickles. They all slid down into the recesses of the machine and when he turned the knob… NOTHING HAPPENED.

I explained to him that it only takes quarters and, oh the weeping and wailing that then ensued. Cruel is his existence.

On the way home from the store, he told me that it was the worst day of his life.

“Is today Tuesday?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I hate all Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the worst days of my life.”

And he meant it too. Bitterly.

His solution to the problem of his impoverishment – “I need to lose more teeth. If I push really hard, I bet I could make more of them come out.”

I’m sure he could. But should he? If he yanks out all his teeth, with what will he eat all this candy he plans on buying?

That kid would sell his right frontal lobe for a ring pop if he could find a physician willing to perform the lobotomy. I pray he never does.