The oldest profession?

DICK SAYS: About a year ago, Liz and I watched a youngish man repeatedly drag himself across the same intersection on his hands. While no one offered him any money during the time we observed him writhing and struggling as his rigid legs barely cleared the curb in front of the onrushing traffic, he was attracting beaucoup attention from the map-toting tourists making their way to the cafes and bakeries of the Left Bank on that cool weekday morning. To be sure, the strange, crudely sewn leather socks attached to his jeans were part of the draw. They were so odd and brought his legs to such an abrupt end that you couldn't help but wonder whether he had bound his feet or simply didn't have any. But the shear audacity of his act was the clincher. Only a truly desperate man would dare to cross a busy thoroughfare on his posterior. Or a very sly one.

I have no idea how lucrative this guy's act is, but it has to be paying pretty good dividends. Otherwise, I wouldn't have seen him today working the same magic in the middle of the much wider and far busier Boulevard Montparnasse. This time the leather socks looked a little newer and his legs were far more flexible, but there was no mistaking that dramatic struggle onto the raised cement island next to one of the stoplights just as one of the huge double-length buses that grunt down this major artery threatened to grind him into the pavement. The feigned agony was exactly the same, the asphalt stage was just bigger.

I was on my bike and those big hinged buses generally don't brake for two-wheelers, so I didn't get a good read on how many of the dozens of pedestrians within twenty meters of him were giving his shtick a second look. But someone must be looking. Otherwise, why stick with the same gig?