The Magical Toothpick

It looked like an ordinary wooden toothpick at Justin Bieber's wedding reception. I hadn't been invited to it, actually; the invitation arrived in the mail by mistake, and I wasn't going to go because I had no conception of what to wear -- I thought a cummerbund was a pastry. But at the last minute a bus narrowly missed hitting me as I crossed the street, so I decided that every minute of the rest of my life should be played for the highest stakes possible, and darn the consequences. I showed up at the reception in brown corduroy trousers and a plaid shirt. The ushers just shrugged and let me waltz right in.

Looking for a souvenir, I zeroed in on the toothpick as something nobody would miss, and that wouldn't show up if they patted me down on my way out. I picked it up and put it in my plaid shirt pocket. It was actually a pretty boring reception. Everyone but me was a celebrity and the whole night was spent by those poor schmendricks being photographed and telling lies about their careers and sexual prowess. I left early, when the shrimp scampi ran out.

On the bus home I kept hearing sneezes that seemed to come from my shirt pocket. I finally peeked into it just in time to see the toothpick open its tiny mouth and sneeze. "Holy Hannah!" I cried in surprise. "Are you anthropomorphic or something?" I was pretty proud of myself for getting that big word out without stumbling. "Yes, yes" said the toothpick in a wooden voice. "I'm alive and I've got magical powers, which you may now command. But first take me out of here -- I'm allergic to plaid!" 

No sooner said than done. "How many wishes do it get?" I asked eagerly. "Wrongo, skippy" it replied. "I don't give wishes or anything else. I take things away."
"Huh? What?" I said. Nobody on the bus cared that I was talking to a toothpick; why should they, when there was another guy sitting across from me with green plastic bags covering his hands?
"I take things away; I am a magical subtracting toothpick" it said patiently. "I was created by elfin lumberjacks from the Marmalade Mountains and served them for eons before I was lost by . . . "
"Yeah, right" I interrupted him. "I've read the Lord of the Rings, so you can skip all that. Just explain what's in it for me, will ya?"
"Very well" it said sullenly. "If you want something removed you just tell me to remove it, to subtract it, and it's gone. Vanished. Absquatulated from existence -- see, I can use big words too!" 
I had to try this out, pronto. So I said "Take away that crazy guy's green plastic bags from around his hands."
They were gone -- completely absquatulated -- in the blink of a wink. The guy looked at his hands in surprise, then got out some more green plastic bags from his coat pocket and began putting them on his hands again.
 "Wow!" I enthused. "That's great! But what's the catch? There must be a catch -- there's always a catch with these things."
But the magical toothpick said nothing. It never spoke again. But it kept removing things at my command.

The next day my rotten neighbor let his dog take a dump on my sidewalk and didn't bother to clean it up. So I commanded it to be removed, and it was. The dump, not the dog. At work I made my supervisor's belt go away. His pants kept going to half mast until he had to leave early to go buy another belt. That was sweet, I tell you what! I've never liked him from the get-go. I disappeared flies from the break room. And when I got home that evening I directed that all the dust bunnies under my bed be gone. 

But then something began gnawing at me. Was I supposed to have this magical wooden toothpick, or was it supposed to be a wedding present for Justin Bieber? Had I stolen it from its rightful owner? I decided there was only one thing to do, so I went back over to Bieber's mansion and tried to get in to give him back his magical toothpick. But when I explained this to the burly guards at the front gate they picked me up and threw me into an oleander bush. I had to use the toothpick to make my scratches and bruises go away.

Just so you know, I did give some serious thought to becoming a super hero with my magical wooden toothpick -- "Captain Subtraction to the rescue!" I dreamed of removing bad hats like Putin and Kim Jong Un -- I could even rid the world of Donald Trump. But in the end, it just wasn't my style. Live and let live is the only motto I've every felt passionate about. So I've kept things small and innocuous. I disappear every plastic bag I see floating around in the streets and in parking lots. I've removed spots from all my neckties. I really enjoy removing ring tones from phones when I'm at the movies. 
I'm still undecided about removing telemarketers when they call me.