The Siamese twins joined at the waist made the best of their situation and became a musical duo, Chad on keyboard and Chip on guitar. But all was not as harmonic as one might expect. Chip got so into his solos that he thrashed around and banged Chad's keyboard with the neck of his guitar. This broke Chad's concentration, causing him to slide his fingers onto the wrong notes. Sometimes the keyboard slipped out of his hands with a loud crack against the hard stage surface. The performance inevitably fell apart under the specter of loud argument. Some nights it even came to blows. Chad had a mean left. And Chip's right was not to be trifled with. The two were brought together at a summit meeting where they agreed to work at the problems constructively. First they tried double saxophones, but as Chip and Chad swayed to their rhythms the instruments got all dented and began producing atonal honks. They tried sharing the same harp for a while, which theoretically might have worked, as Chad was left handed and Chip the opposite. But they kept wanting to strum the same strings simultaneously, causing them to snap. Any one of the two might have lost an eye. In the end they traded all the damaged instruments for a used accordion. This went well. Chad worked the left end of the accordion and sang bass, Chip worked the right end and sang tenor. They didn't get many gigs though. Because Chip and Chad were one physical entity, people were not willing to pay the price for two musicians.

Story #240