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Jimmy had Ferengi teeth. The neighbor complained to his parents that Jimmy had bitten his shepherd on the leg.

“He climbed the fence and took old Charger’s leg into his mouth and bit the poor fellow. I couldn’t believe it. And with those deadly Ferengi teeth he has.”

“It’s unnatural,” Jimmy’s mother told Jimmy. “No skateboarding for you for a week.”

Jimmy’s school chums teased Jimmy for his weird teeth, which were sharp and often dirty. But when they ran screaming with bleeding legs to the fourth grade teacher, they decided that this Jimmy was not a child to be teased. On the cool side, they’d carry interesting scars for the duration of their lives. One of the boys, who became a lawyer, showed his leg to a client and said, “I got this one from some kid, Jimmy was his name, who had the teeth of a Ferengi.”

“What’s a Ferengi?” the client said.

One boy, named Sorenson, pointed at Jimmy after the schoolyard attack and said, “I’ll have those teeth. Look for me and my bat.”

Suspended for drawing blood, Jimmy went dejected yard to yard, kicking at the uncut grass. He paused at the fence that separated the school from the empty neighborhood, and watched his friends at recess. “Why do I have to have these Ferengi teeth?” he asked himself. “They give me the urge to bite. I’m a biter. And now everyone hates me.”

On his way back home, he met an old man on a door stoop. The man asked, “Why so glum, son?”

Jimmy told him and pointed at his teeth.

“You do look like a Ferengi,” the old man said. “You must get into loads of trouble.”

“I bit a dog and my friends at school hate me.”

“I know a doctor who could take them out. That would solve your problems, eh?”

“Could you? Would he?”

“Sure. But you should ask your parents.”

Jimmy’s father looked at Jimmy as if he’d been snorting drugs. “Those are your teeth. You just can’t go pulling them out.”

“And who is this old man?” Jimmy’s mother wanted to know, bringing soup to the table. “We have no idea who this man is. He could be a molester.”

Jimmy stayed in his room the next day. He watched out the rain-soaked window. In the window the reflection of Jimmy’s teeth multiplied in the droplets. He felt as if he were drowning in a pool with piranha. He wished he had normal teeth. He wished the Ferengi had never come to pass in the art of the day.

In the late evening after dinner, he opened the window and found his way to the stoop where he’d met the old man. He entered the apartment and went door to door, listening. On his way out, he met the old man coming in with a bag of groceries. “Ah,” the old man said. “You.”

“I need these teeth gone,” Jimmy said.

“And your father and your mother? I think I know. Sorry, boy, but it isn’t going to happen this way.”

Jimmy sulked on the streets. Under a red light he saw boys and as he drew near he recognized Sorenson and then he remembered.

“Hey,” Jimmy called. “Sorenson, you’ll be a poor ass all your life. No lawyer you.”

“It’s Jimmy the Ferengi,” Sorenson called back. “And who’ll be poor all his life and never a lawyer?”

“You’ll have sex with your mother when you’re sixteen,” Jimmy said.

“Look at this,” Sorenson said, swinging his bat. He started across the street with his friends.

“I’ll bet you’re a cowardly doll,” Jimmy said.

“Oh you, Jimmy, you asked for it,” and Sorenson prepared a great swing at Jimmy’s face, stepping in quick and clean.

And Jimmy gave Sorenson a big Ferengi smile and waited for his new face.