My Life Interpreted By P.G. Wodehouse (Phase One in which The Child Has Eight Fingers)

Slapped and baited, I wailed my descent and intent with a solid howl that merely accentuated the brutality with which I'd been squeezed, eased and dragged into the world. The midwife remarked with evident precision the well 'hearsed observation that I weighed as much as sixteen bags of sugar and carried the humour of sixteen bails of shite'.

This was widely frowned upon in that Cornish maternity farm as a compliment too endearing to a baby with such an unfortunate disposition, and it was only then that the doctor was summoned.

Whisked away, prodded, projected, neglected and rejected, I became the group W. baby of my age, a condemned cripple for whom this life could not contain the pleasure of a public upbringing.

Heark the doctor that, save for two missing fingers I was as healthy as a mounting mule, but I should never likely amount to anything more than a street side mockumentary clicking my tangled octet into recogniseably pleasant rhythm patterns for the dubious amusement of passers by.

Nurses spanked my increasingly spare behind with abandon, enjoying the steady relief that one designated as unworthy of life introduces to the job. Doctors imparted upon my parents that they should prepare for the worst, for who could socially recover from the curse of missing the core components of delivering a solid impregnable accusation. It was in that moment that the surgeon was called.

He abandoned his charge instantly and flew inwards from theatre trailling the intestinal profile of some poor departed soul and carrying a faint odious scent of carrying too much financial clout and oppositely dwindling amounts of time in which to aggress with it...

'His toes' cried the surgeon, content only to swallow his own air even in spite of himself.

'We shall liberate him of two toes in pursuit of the perfect hand' he bargained with himself, content that a man with a firm hand could wave off the cruellest of abuse as he hobbled in only a slightly obvious arc towards the Centre for Veterans of Strange and Unusual  Surgeries (CORK - inexplicably).

'We shall graft, until we can graft no more for eighteen years. We shall build an ark upon which this synthetic fingernail can tread the sweeping tide of disability. What say you to that parents of this uncompromising genetic monster?!' he drew air in like cheap leaden gasoline from an equally economical hose emanating from an equally forgettable motor vehicle.

He resumed, a hail of suggestions raining upon the parents ears and undoubtedly impairing those still developing in their infant. He plotted a somewhat opulent trajectory awaiting the nasal structures and observed the likely Eastern and Westward trajectory of each eye at such inconvenient junctures as when photography was essential or when mother-in-laws were passing judgement upon the poor little fellow.

'The nose shall be stapled and the remains kept here within a tight-fitted bottle 'n brine! For the eyes, skin shall be shorn and sewn from the finest of pigs,  the rarest of breeds the mightiest boars!' He was for some reason carried away into a steamy illogical arm-heavy dance.

Imagine his horror, imagine his shock whence the parents of this shredded whelk shrieked 'STOP! FIEND!' in their race to rein in the musings of this asumed madman, content as they were in their knowledge that hopping on chastened toes was, is and will remain a most ill-convenient means of transport at any rate!

And in such a merry instant the surgeon washed his hands of the mutant hand of the mutant boy who's presumably mentally mutated parents cared not for podiatric solutions to such Earthly visible atrocities. He cursed these mortal fools to be off from his sight, take their sputous wretched mutant and recommend his surgery to their more spirited and fickle companions.

Later, they stood before the glass of the incubation hall staring lovingly at their baby. It mattered not to the parents that the sweeping mane of curly black hair they observed  spraying from their child's head ultimately belonged to a far more attractive specimen than their obscured balding coot dozing foolishly behind aforesaid handsome specimen.

Their first and only son was in rogue health.