If you don’t like my toenails, then you shouldn’t look down at my feet.

Midget Ulrich, all 6 feet 11 inches of him, a man of someone’s dreams though I have yet to meet someone who believes that, had numerous fetishes. This isn’t something that should come as a surprise to any reader or those who line up outside the kitchen tent for one of the meals he has cooked on one of the Viking hordes’ numerous battles. Needless to say, his fellow compatriots, the ones who take him along on their conquests, don’t care what idiosyncrasies he has, as long as he keeps turning out dishes like pelican stew on high holy days or sweet potato pancakes laced with maple syrup, which they had just been introduced to in Columbusland, or Caviar from Russia.

The Caviar was a point of contention between the two distinct camps of Vikings. There were those who loved Caviar on toast, while the others would only eat it on biscuits made of Irish peat. But in both cases, they agreed on one thing. The Caviar had to be washed down with a couple of glasses of Polish vodka made with barley. Potatoes hadn’t been introduced into their diet as of yet. In fact, when an earlier horde had made their landing in New York, New York, the native Apaches gave them a potato to smoke. However, after trying desperately to light it and coughing their guts up, they passed. Though they did sit in awe of Apache tribe members who smoked their potatoes without fear of damaging their lungs.

Things did change one day when Midget Ulrich was introduced to a Mohican chef named Mini Haha, at her restaurant in Lake Hiawatha, Old Jersey, somewhere close to a river later to be renamed the Delaware. “They are so uncouth,” she told him while they sat on the grass outside her restaurant waiting for the rain to subside so they could go into her kitchen which was currently under water. “They try to smoke everything. I once gave them an artichoke fried in olive oil, and they drank the olive oil and tried to smoke the artichoke. But because it was drenched with oil, they went up in flames. Good riddance I said!” she laughed while she tossed a rock with much precision at a whale in the river, hitting it on its head. That caused the whale to begin to sing a song later renamed the Song of Hiawatha. Anyway, the one thing Mini Haha did tell Midget Ulrich while they sat there was, “I am going to give you a potato, but you mustn’t smoke it. You must either steam it, bake it or roast it, but don’t smoke it.”

Midget Ulrich was fascinated. “What’s roasting,” he asked and once the rains stopped and the flooding in the kitchen had subsided, they went in and Mini Haha showed Midget Ulrich exactly how to roast a potato.

“Just don’t tell the Irish,” she said, “because the last time I visited the Oracle in Newark, it told of a time far in the future when there will be a potato famine in Ireland and they nearly all died.”

“Pity that won’t happen,” replied Midget causing Mini Haha to slap Midget on his calf muscle, because that’s all she could reach.

“I’m part Irish,” she told him and Midget of course being the conciliatory in chief, apologised for his behaviour. But something strange happened. When Mini Haha slapped his calf muscle she looked down at his feet and noticed he wasn’t wearing any sandals.

“They don’t give them to cooks,” he told her, “only the warriors get them.” Mini Haha offered him her moccasins, but they were far too small. Midget thanked her and then turned to leave because he felt embarrassed.

She stopped him though and said, “when did you last clip your toenails?”

“Never,” he replied. “Sometimes I grind them on a stone but clipping, what’s that?”

Well Mini Haha felt it was time for her to get back in his good graces and to show him that the Irish indeed were brilliant. She went over to one of the kitchen drawers, opened it and pulled out a pair of large red scissors. Midget Ulrich was fascinated. “Sit down,” she said to him, which he did obediently. Then, with much dexterity, she began to cut his toenails and when she was done there was a little tile of toenails next to him.

“What do we do with these?” he asked seriously.

“Oh nothing. We leave them there and the next flood will wash them out into the East River.” Midget was in another world. He had actually found someone who liked him.

Maybe he was the man of her dreams. And with that thought, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You know,” he said as Mini Haha closed her eyes in order to be transported to another world, “if you don’t like my toenails, then you shouldn’t look down at my feet.”

“Oh no!” she wailed, “I love your toenails now. In fact, your toes are magnificent. The Great Bear in the sky when he made you, he made you with the best toenails ever.”

“Who’s the Great Bear?”

“Oh,” she replied sounding sad. “You don’t know who the Great Bear is?” Midget shook his head. “He’s the one who created everything around us.”

“I see,” replied Midget none the wiser, “I thought that was Thor with the help of Moses.”

“Who’s Moses?” she asked. “I’ve heard of Thor, but that theory has been debunked.”

Just then Midget heard a battle cry and turned to Mini Haha who was now the woman of his dreams, “I have to go and cook lunch. I’ll roast the potatoes,” and it was those words that began one of the richest and most profound relationships the world has ever witnessed. People to this day talk about the love between Mini Haha the daughter of the last Mohican chief, and the executive chef of the Vikings, Midget Ulrich.