Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting.

He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again.

As before.

Enter Vladimir.

Estragon: (Giving up again). Nothing to be done.

Vladimir: (Advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart).  Is whatshisface still writing?

Estragon: Who whatshisface?

Vladimir: Mig or something. That Mig guy.

Estragon: (Irritably). Mig. Yeah. I think.

Vladimir: (Hurt, coldly). You think or you know?

Estragon: Know. I know. I just read something yesterday.

Vladimir: Was it fresh? Maybe it was old.

Estragon: It was fresh. He’s writing. He’s probably writing this.

Vladimir: (Admiringly). Heh. Yeah, probly. What was it?

Estragon: (Tugging at boot again). What was what?

Vladimir: What you read.

Estragon: The man formerly known as the smallest man in the world was standing before a mirror cleaning his teeth real good with various tools because he was at the dental hygienist the day before and she scolded him.

Vladimir: That sounds old. Didn’t he write that before? What’s up with the smallest man thing anyhow?

Estragon: (Has given up on boot again. Shrugs). Probably last time he went to the dental hygienist, yeah. But this was fresh. It had a blooming hillside.

Vladimir: Wut?

Estragon: He’s driving along stuck in traffic in a hurry to get to the dentist, where he will of course arrive half an hour early and end up having to wait half an hour on top of that for a good hour of science-magazine reading only he doesn’t know that yet and he sees a hillside covered with trees blooming and thinks, one, that explains my hay fever and two, that sure is pretty, I’ll have to have a good look at that sometime when I’m not driving.

Vladimir: You sure that wasn’t old?

Estragon: (Exasperated). I’m sure. The dental hygienist had small hands and asks him how he is and he says tired and she says yeah but dentally how are you and he says okay, no complaints and she gets to work and at one point he wants to ask something but she has both hands inside his mouth and she says, what you feel on your tongue is some gel, anasthetic gel or fluoride gel or something and he says uh-huh, and thinks she’s okay because she just answered the question he wanted to ask, the gel was freaking him out because it felt like a piece of flesh and he thought his mouth was falling apart.

Vladimir: (Stretches). And she educates him about how to floss, how to use the special floss, how to use the normal brush, and the medium sized brush and all the little brushes.

Estragon: (Squints). Yeah.

Vladimir: Yeah, it was old.

Estragon: No, I think it was new.