MONCTON – Can’t Count Johnson has passed on at the ripe old self-reported age of 375.
Possibly the oldest man ever to live, Johnson got the nickname ‘Can’t Count’ due to his inability to do the simplest arithmetic, or place numbers in a sequence.
“He told me he was 375 years old, and I have no reason not to believe him,” said local legend Believe Anything Johnson, one of Can’t Count Johnson’s 17 wives. “He often talked about his childhood, going to Nirvana concerts and playing his Sega Genesis. You know the kind of old-timey stories that would make any girl’s heart swoon.”
Dozens of people who considered Can’t Count Johnson a friend gathered to tell stories in downtown Moncton yesterday.
“I always assumed he was an old-timey baseball player, or a mid-level mafioso, or some other kind of profession where it’s normal to have a two-word descriptive nickname,” said his friend, local legend No Nickname Porter. “But I’ll be honest, I don’t know what his job was. The only thing I know about him for sure is that he could not count at all.”
Can’t Count Johnson, (né Doug Johnson), had more than 102 separate jobs over the course of his life, including accountant, actuary, NASA scientist, physicist, engineer, electrician, architect, blackjack dealer, inventory manager at a warehouse, Transylvanian landowner (or Count), kindergarten teacher, drummer, shepherd, and carpenter. He was fired from every one.
The Guiness Book of World Records and Statistics Canada have attempted and failed to find anyone who could verify that Can’t Count Johnson was indeed born in 1647, but in the end they had to take him at his word and name him The World’s Oldest Man.
“You see, they couldn’t find anyone to verify that he was born then, but they also couldn’t find anyone who could refute it,” explained Johnson’s son, Confusing Words Johnson, who is a local legend and lawyer in Fredericton. “So that’s proof right there.”
Besides his wives and 396.5 children, Johnson is survived by his dog, local canine legend Counts Great Johnson.
