A Highly Practiced Technique
A man walks into the market followed by his ten-year-old son. The kid
is spinning a 25 cent piece in the air and catching it between his
teeth. As they walk through the market someone bumps into the boy at
just the wrong moment and the coin goes straight into his mouth and
lodges in his throat. He immediately starts choking and going blue in
the face and Dad starts panicking, shouting and screaming for help.
A middle-aged, fairly unremarkable man in a gray suit is sitting at a
coffee bar in the market reading his newspaper and sipping a cup of
coffee. At the sound of the commotion he looks up, puts his coffee cup
down on the saucer, neatly folds his newspaper and places it on the
counter. He gets up from his seat and makes his unhurried way across the
market.
Reaching the boy (who is still standing, but just barely) the man
carefully takes hold of the kid's testicles and squeezes gently but
firmly. After a few seconds the boy convulses violently and coughs up
the 25 cent piece, which the man catches in his free hand. Releasing the
boy, the man hands the coin to the father and walks back to his seat in
the coffee bar without saying a word.
As soon as he is sure that his son has suffered no lasting ill effects,
the father rushes over to the man and starts effusively thanking him.
The man looks embarrassed and brushes off the father's thanks. As the
man is about to leave, the father asks one last question: "I've never
seen anybody do anything like that before - it was fantastic - what are
you, a surgeon or something like that?"
"Oh, good heavens, no", the man replies, "I work for the IRS."
