The town without point

Giovannino Daywasted was a big traveler. One day he arrived in a town where the edges of the houses were rounded and nothing was pointed, from knives to scissors. Walking this way and that way, the boy saw some bushes with roses and wanted to take them. He thought: “I should pay attention to the thorns, in order not to hurt myself”, but he soon realized that the thorns were also smooth and they would not hurt him. While he was picking the flowers, though, a guard approached him and said: “Hey boy! Don’t you know that it is forbidden to pick roses?”.  “I am sorry, I did not know”, replied Giovannino. “Well, in this case you will pay just half the fine”, said the guard, who started noting it down on his notebook, using a pencil without a point. Then, the boy asked the guard to show him his sword. “Of course”, the guard said, and took out the sword from its sheath. As expected, even the weapon did not have a point. “Excuse me, guard, could you tell me which town this is?”. “This is the Town without points”. “Ah, sounds great, but how do you deal with nails, then?”. “Well, we got rid of them long time ago and now we use just glue. Anyway, could you please slap me twice in the face?”, the man said. Giovannino was shocked: “What? Slap you? Why? I don’t want to go to prison for having offended a guard! I should receive two slaps instead!”. But the man said: “This is the law of the city: to give four slaps for receiving a fine, two slaps for half a fine. Do you think that it’s insane, that it’s terrible? We know that, and of course people hate slapping innocents, so they pay a lot of attention in order not to break the rules. Come on, give me two slaps, and be more careful the next time!”. But Giovannino did not want to slap him, so he had to leave the town and was accompanied by the guard to the frontier. He still dreams, though, about coming back to the Town without points and live in the kindest of the worlds, in a pretty house with a smooth roof.

Tags: points; town; guard; roses; slaps.