Conditional Reality

Tincan Deertrack received many phone calls from strangers. Most of them wanted to know how he got such an odd name. My father kicked me around when I was a kid, Tincan told them. It was awful, but in the end I decided he wasn’t such a bad guy. He taught me a lot about life. The callers never phoned back, which was okay with Tincan. He got tired of constantly telling his life story. Sometimes he called his father and asked him who he was kicking around these days. His father usually told Tincan he had the wrong number.