The LIVE SOUND MIXING Homepage www.dunkworld.com

Carl's Teeth All Rights Reserved © 1994 Duncan R Fry     Once, when I played in a band, we had a bass player named Carl. Not his real name, but close enough for rock and roll. The band eventually fell apart, as bands frequently do for many reasons, but in this case mainly because the lead singer was playing hide the sausage with Carl's wife. Still, that's another story. Years of periodontic neglect had caused Carl's teeth to rot away, and he had a set of false teeth. For some reason they didn't fit very well, probably because he was too cheap to pay for a decent set. Anyway, one night he came home from a gig feeling extremely tired and emotional, and went for the big spit. Unfortunately, while driving the porcelain bus, along with the evening's food and drinks he spewed his teeth down the toilet as well! When the Sewage Board told him that looking though the sewage down at Werribee for a pair of false teeth was not a job for the faint hearted, he told his wife to go and look instead! Quite reasonably, she jacked up at this, so Carl had to get himself another pair, and these fitted him even less well. We never earned very much money in the band, so we all had to have day jobs, although Carl was convinced that he could survive on just his band earnings if only his wife and kid would stop eating! Needless to say, his wife and kid disagreed. So, he had to work at a real job. And because he didn't have a car, he had to catch the tram into work each day, but he managed to time his journey so that it coincided with a bunch of teenage schoolgirls on their way to school. Carl would bignote himself and regale them with stories about how he was a famous pop star, and tell them about all the other stars he hobnobbed with at the gigs. Then he would bask in their admiration for the remainder of the journey. All good things come to an end, though, and so it was with Carl and his pubescent fan club. It was a cold morning, and Carl was just sitting there looking suitably jaded in just a t-shirt and jeans telling the girls about the previous night's gig. The old 'W' class trams, without any doors, were pretty chilly of a morning, and halfway through the story a sudden gust of icy air made Cal sneeze. As he did so, he blew his false teeth out of his mouth! They clacked and skittered their way across the floor and disappeared off the edge of the open tram, out into the peak hour traffic and never to be seen again. The young schoolgirls pissed themselves laughing, since poor Carl had gone from pop star to Grandpa in about ten seconds! Glowing bright red with embarrassment, he leaped off the tram and caught the bus from then on!   This story first appeared in Connections magazine Back to Stories page