If you didn’t read the first part of this true-life story from my past, I recommend you read it now. To get the real magic of this story, you need to read the first post — first. It should be on this site. Just scroll down past this post and there it is.

Chapter Two.

Fast forward seven months.

My mother and I were doing some Christmas shopping one day before Christmas (of course).  Here, I do not mean “one day” as the day before Christmas, but “one day” as in “a single day.” We had bought an item at the Harris store in Oak Cliff.  While we waited for the sale to be processed, I let slip a complaint about the wart on my finger. Perhaps I had served a double-fault the day before, or some other wart-induced calamity. But I did complain about my wart.

The saleswoman reached over the counter and took my hand in hers.  She was as old as my mother, so I was not unduly alarmed. I wasn’t even duly alarmed. She turned my hand over in hers, looked at the wart, and began gently to rub it with one of her fingers.  I do not remember which of her fingers she used, nor whether she rubbed in a circular motion or a linear motion. But she rubbed my left index finger, or more accurately, she rubbed the wart on my finger.

This happened rather quickly and she rubbed for no more than a few seconds. And as she rubbed the wart, she said, “I believe it will go away.”

Outside, walking to the car, my mother and I joked about the incident. It was harmless enough.  She seemed like a nice lady, and was not offended by the double-fault-provoking growth.

Being well-read, I had heard of medicine men removing a wart by rubbing it with a seven-year-old rag,  hand-woven of flax and soaked in garlic oil, and afterward burying the rag in the ground during a three-quarter moon and at such a point that the morning shadow of a cedar tree would cover the burial spot.  I found no documentation to indicate that those results lasted any better than the scissor snipping did.

A week later, the wart was gone. Vanished. No special care required. No scissors. No queasy stomach. No wart.  No double-faults.

A year later, the wart was gone. Two years later, the wart was gone. Twenty years later, the wart was still gone.

The saleswoman could have been an out-of-work witch doctor making some money by working the Christmas rush. She may have been a skilled surgeon doing some pro-bono work, or perhaps testing a new procedure on unsuspecting strangers.  I could have been the subject of some undercover testing not approved by the AMA or the NIH or the CIA.

Of course, Harris would not reveal the identity of the sales clerk. Mysteriously, personnel records for part-time Christmas workers for that year were lost, destroyed by a freak fire which burned only a tiny section of their files. (This was, as you know, long before computers captured everything and never lost a file.) Thirteen private-eyes (seven PI’s, one with only one eye) could find no trace of the mystery woman.  And I could find no trace of the wart. So, after years, I abandoned the search.  For either one.

Today, the wart is still gone. The only thing on the pad of my left index finger is a tiny scar—the result of a pair of scissors.

And that’s the story of double faults and a wart.  I was just a couple of years out of college and it happened pretty much as I described it in these two posts. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my earlier life, and how shamans (though she did not enter a trance) or grandmothers (or perhaps even an alien) can outperform the medical industry at times.  Leave me a comment and let me know if you think this could be the centerpiece of my memoir.  And thanks for your patience.

James Callan, wart-free ex-tennis player