All day long I dragged my flaws down Darcy Street, straining as I walked like a horse with a plough. I was craters, just flaws and flaws. None of them — and there were pimples there, epidermal cysts, pock marks and sores — none of them had the tiniest little bit of a wheel under it so that it was thus all drag. Indeed, so big was my heap of flaws that when I got to the Doctor of Flaws I could not get them all through his doorway and had to leave them in an ugly mess like a traffic accident outside his window. He looked down through his window with a telescope examining them a long time before saying, finally, “I’m sorry, there’s not really much I can do for you. I could cut them up and mix them around but that would only make it worse. I could give you glasses that make them seem smaller but that would stop you seeing pain in other lands. Besides, they cause gross ear chafe. That leaves hypnosis. You probably wouldn’t like hypnosis. You would never love a single bird afterwards and you could say goodbye to your intestinal fortitude. I would advise you just to put a sack over them and continue dragging. They are bigger to you than they seem, anyway.” “But my mouth is down there with my bad breath,” I protested. “I would surely die with a sack over it. I need my bad breath to live.” “Well, you’ll just have to learn to cope with it then,” he said heartlessly. Just then I noticed, tucked away in a darkened corner of the office, a little heap all covered over in sackcloth. “Well no wonder you are a Doctor of Flaws!” I yelled scornfully and, taking out my flashlight, shone it brazenly on the heap. “No!” he screamed, shrill like a frightened young maiden baring her biggest underground mole. “Please!” But there it was — his wallet and hemorrhoid. His Exxon card and the long strings like beads of sweat and pimples. “Dirty filthy little pretender with a microscope,” I cursed him. I would have elaborated but just then I was aroused from my fury by the shouts of a crowd which had gathered about my bad opinion of myself in the street outside. It was obviously a meeting of The Society for the Prevention of Ailments, for they all had banners and placards and were shouting slogans such as “Stop ailments now! Did you know most deaths are caused by ailments?” I was so embarrassed I ran downstairs immediately and, having a little book of my finest poems with me, began to scatter them desperately over the heap. But it was no good. The pock marks began to devour them, the bad breath wheezed through. You could see my desperate eyes down there, staring up like lost children. “Ban the boil! Down with cysts!” people were shouting as I strapped myself back into the halter and began to trot shamefacedly down the street.