I only pun in my spare time. For cable, I sell kids shoes. Forty hours a week I tend to the footwear needs of the precocious offspring of affluent Cherry Creek parents. I say precocious because “goddamn little bastards” seems an altogether too harsh label to apply to four year olds: appropriate though it may be. Apart from an inexpensive, though time consuming, form of birth control; my job does occasionally give me the gift of anecdote.

A few days ago I was outfitting a brother and sister with some new sandals. I helped the sister without any trouble, and then it was the brother’s turn. He was boring and his feet were upsetting the septum. While I was checking the fit of his shoes, trying to breathe through my mouth as subtly as one can, the sister noticed my wedding ring.

“You’re married?” she asked with enough surprise to be a little insulting.

“I sure am,” I replied

“You can’t be married,” she said with enough certainty to be even more insulting.

“Why not?”

“Because you have a beard.”

This was news to me.  The woman who issued my wife and me our marriage license seemed to only be interested in whether or not we were cousins; that is, first cousins.

“My wife likes my beard.”

“No she doesn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I don’t like it.”

Bitch.

“Well; you’re not my wife.”

After a pause I guess she decided that being face to face with Grizzly Adam’s love child was an opportunity that she just couldn’t pass up, because then she said, “Can I touch it?”