The Tale of a Man

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there lived a man without a beard.

"Why do you have no beard?" the villagers would ask him, as it was unheard of to have none.

"It is not that I have no beard. It is not a matter of having. It is that I do not have a beard," he replied.

The villagers pondered this for a while, and then decided the best course of action would be to kick the man's ass.

After the excruciating ass-whupping, the villagers again asked the man, "Why is it that you have no beard?"

Again the man, now bloodied and broken, replied mechanically, "It is not that I have no beard, I merely do not have a beard."

Of course this merely infuriated the villagers further, and after a brief all-hands discussion, the motion was carried to commence another bout of ass-kicking.

When their feet tired of kicking the beardless man, the villagers once again stopped. "Tell us now, twice ass-whupped man, why do you not have a beard?"

The man looked genuinely surprised. "It is not that I am a beardless man, but that I am not a man at all," he said, and later menstruated.