So the other day I'm in my office, sitting at my desk, doing that thing that I do. The door opens and I turn to see who it is. Much to my surprise, it's Benny The Four-Fingered Magician.

For just a moment I panic. I assume that Benny heard I was talking smack about him. I assume he's come to give me a four-fingered beatdown. I figure it's going to begin with him saying angry things and shaking that stumpy partial finger in my face. Then it might progress to profanity and four-fingered chest pushing. Then things just might get really bad, with him swinging an oddly-misshapen fist at some of my favorite body parts. In a half-second, a whole novella flew through my mind. There was even a court room scene, with Benny's lawyer playing up his disability to a sympathetic looking jury.

Three hours before Benny's arrival, the guy in the office behind me says to me, "You're gonna be here all afternoon, right? Can I leave this package with you? I've got a guy picking it up at 3:30."

It just so happens the guy was Benny. This is also why I saw him in my parking lot two weeks ago… he was with the guy in the office behind me. So it turns out that Benny was in my office to get his package, not to administer a half-handed smackdown.

Well. I dodged an awkward confrontation there. And it's a good thing, because those jurors were really giving me mean looks.

So yesterday at work I was standing outside enjoying a stick of pure very suburban Washington D.C. when I see one of my all time favorite people to mock driving through the parking lot. It's Benny the four-fingered magician.

Benny isn't his real name. Unlike most people, whose names I change out of some mild concern for their privacy, Benny acquired his fake name because I can't remember his real name, or even his stage name. And Benny seems an appropriately stupid and condescending name, doesn't it?

His name might be fake, but he really is missing a finger. Well, most of one. He's got a little stub where most people would have a right-hand index finger. So I guess technically that makes him "Benny the seven-and-one-quarter-fingered-with-two-opposable-thumbs magician," but you know what I mean.

Benny is also an actual magician. This guy first popped up on my radar when he put on a show in the children's department at the public library. It was basic garden variety stuff, slight of hand tricks and the like. The assembled battalion of six year olds enjoyed it, and of course the show was for them, not for me.

I never would've noticed the mostly-missing finger, but The Kid wanted to volunteer to participate in a trick. So we raised our hands and waited our turn. The trick was something uninspiring. He made my driver's license disappear in his hat, or something like that. At the end of the trick he shook my hand while the kids cheered.

That hand shaking part was creepy as hell. His hand just felt… wrong. My first impulse was to yank my hand back and yell something like "what the hell is wrong with your hand?!?" But then, that probably wouldn't be the best example to set for a room full of impressionable yutes.

I wonder, does a missing finger help his "trade" or hinder it? Discuss. With examples. Be sure to show your work and cite your sources.

Anyway, the lame coin tricks and mildly skin crawling handshake have really stuck this guy in my mind. Now that I recognize him, I notice him all the time. Usually I see Benny at the bar. He's always wandering around with that "I'm all that" look on his face as he checks out the wimmen folk. Smooth, thy name is Benny.

So yesterday was the first time I saw Benny's ride. It's a blue mid-80s model Corvette. Nice car, but he totally kills the cool factor with his custom plate: Z MAGIC. Now that's hot!

A few hours after this, work ended and we needed to take a short trip. We had previously ordered some new tile at a store about 100 kilometers away, and last night we went to pick it up. About 70 kilometers of the distance between my house and this flooring megastore is freeway and a lot of that distance is farmland. Since deer hunting is pretty popular around here, and since crops attract deer, this stretch of road is peppered with homemade deer stands.

Some stands are hidden in the trees where they're mostly invisible from the road. Some stands rest right on the ground, which I suppose makes them more blinds than stands. But some farmers will actually put their stands on stilts right in the middle of their fields.

I've seen some stands that are so nice they look like miniature cottages. From the outside, they look like they should be filled with carpeting and overstuffed furniture.

But then I've also seen stands that are just a few sheets of plywood nailed together.

My favorite kind is the kind that looks like an outhouse on a stick. On this particular stretch of road there are probably three that fit this description. Little closet-sized things propped up on long wooden poles. Every time I drive by, I expect to see a man climbing the ladder with a People magazine under his arm.

So anyway, getting the tile and getting back home was pretty uneventful, but The Kid has something going that's starting to bother me. I think he's a little bit too cautious, a little too afraid.

I want him to view strangers with suspicion, and to be mindful of the risks of crossing the street without looking, and all the rest of that. But I think it's getting a little too much when he tries to convince me not to close the garage door because he doesn't want me to be crushed in it.

For a few minutes, I try to figure out if there's a way to tease him about this without being mean or causing permanent pyschological damage. I couldn't think of one.

I quietly reassured him that electric garage door openers are very safe and that most of them, including ours, have a safety feature that will retract the door if there's any resistance.

But what I really wanted to do was press that button and then pretend to get stuck in the closing door. But I'm pretty sure that would generate screams of terror. So, yeah, that would probably be the wrong thing to do.