Bartholomew “Barty” Butterfield III, Esq., a lawyer whose self-importance rivaled only his collection of antique snuff boxes, settled into the barber chair. He adjusted his silk tie, a peacock-blue monstrosity that clashed spectacularly with his pinstriped suit. He cleared his throat, the sound like gravel gargling with expensive sherry.
“Good day,” Barty boomed at the barber, a burly man named Gus whose hands moved with the practiced grace of a seasoned surgeon. “A rather… *interesting* case I’ve been working on,” Barty continued, already launching into a verbose explanation of a property dispute involving a disgruntled ferret breeder.
Gus, a man who preferred the company of his clippers to legal jargon, simply grunted periodically, his eyes fixed on the task at hand. Barty, undeterred, plowed on, waxing eloquent about clauses, precedents, and the inherent ambiguities of local zoning regulations.
Suddenly, Gus stopped shaving. He leaned in conspiratorially close to Barty’s ear, his breath smelling faintly of bay rum and impending doom. “This kid,” he whispered, his voice low and gravelly, “is one of the dumbest kids in the world! Look, watch out now…”
Barty, mid-sentence about the merits of a particular legal precedent, was momentarily thrown. He blinked, confused. Before he could ask what on earth Gus was talking about, the barber let out a roar that shook the barbershop.
“HAIRBALL!”
A large, fluffy hairball, the size of a small tangerine, had suddenly detached itself from Barty’s magnificent head of hair and was hurtling towards the floor. Gus, with a swift and surprisingly agile move, scooped it up before it could land on the pristine checkered floor.
Barty, speechless, stared at the offending mass of hair. His carefully constructed legal argument, his carefully combed hair, all undone by a rogue hairball. Gus simply chuckled, a deep rumble that shook the mirrors. “Dumbest kid in the world, I tell ya!” he muttered, shaking his head. “Couldn’t even keep his own hair together!”
From then on, Barty Butterfield III, Esq. remained conspicuously quiet during his haircuts. He even started bringing a small, velvet pouch to his appointments, just in case. The ferret breeder case, however, remained unresolved. Some things, it seemed, were just too hairy to handle.
