Part One: The Sad Tooth
There are times we all face when we need to get shit done but people stand in our way (for their various selfish and ignorant reasons). Sometimes it's endless red tape, other times it's sheer idiocy. By the end of this tale, the idiot shall be revealed, indeed!
Lady, I Don't Think You Understand:
When I was 18 I found a(nother) cavity on one of my trashy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks teeth... you know, the ones that hang out in the back and do the thuggish grunt-work. I don't really care about these teeth because they are lumbering and stupid, not vicious and pretty like my front teeth; they are the lame, "I-have-swamp-plants-hanging-out-of-my-mouth" Brontosaurus* molars compared to the "I-kill-for-the-pleasure-alone" Velociraptor incisors. And maybe because I don't care about them, the jerks go and get all uppity occasionally (apparently they were offended by my old "8 sugars in my coffee" routine**).
I was making faces in the mirror one day (an occupation of a great many teenage girls... only mine involved trying to look like Travis Bickle and yelling. This goes back to sneaking off to watch movies when I was
when I spied what I thought was a giant cavity. If you took a finely sharpened pencil and stabbed your tooth with it, you'd get an idea of what this thing looked like. It was an emergency!
Let's talk about the oral environment for a minute!
I was speaking with another dentist recently about cavities and he told me there are two types of mouths (or maybe he said there were more, I don't remember; he was kind of weird and boring and had creepy 1970's crocheted things all about his office and it made me on-edge. I don't like being in sorta-old places. I feel all panicky like “This is where we are going to live forever now – in this festering, shag-carpeted hell!” but as soon as we travel to the 1920's and before, I feel pretty good about being around old things... you know, just in case you want to time travel with me). Regardless, we'll keep it to two types of mouths. Why are dentists so weird? It's a Universal Truth: they're always just kind of quiet and well, odd. I feel this way about lots of people though. Then I sometimes get worried that it's *me* that's weird... which is crazy-talk and, luckily, the feeling soon vanishes. What? Oh, yes, the different mouths: One type of mouth that is alkaline (?) and has "plaque issues" and one that is more acidic (?) and gets cavities. Or some such horseshit. Why am I expected to relay minute details all the Goddamn time, Stupid Brain! Which means people with plaque rarely get cavities and people with cavities rarely have plaque! The more you know! *stars and rainbow sparkles*
Back to The Action!
So I call my dentist's office as I was sure we were pretty tight and knew I would be handled in the manner I was accustomed to. The call went as such:
Receptionist: Dr.Nerdbreath's office!
Me: Hello! It's me, Joan. I have a serious problem. I have a tooth with a hole the size of a pea (I wanted to frighten her because... well, I just enjoy it) in it and I need it fixed!
R: Oh, goodness! Well, let's see here *45 seconds of breathing* I can fit you in March 10th.
M: What? That's in 6 months! This is serious - it's, it's, like a black hole in my head! A vortex, I'm saying!
R: I'm sorry, that's as soon as we have for non-emergency... (what, who is this guy, the Donnie Wahlberg of dentists?******)
M: What constitutes an emergency, besides gaping holes in one's teeth?
R: Well, loose teeth, bleeding, swelling, pain...
M: Pain you say?
We'll pause here. Here, friends, is the moment when I should have told the Truth. I should have sucked it up and waited, sought a second opinion, visited a healing-wench, what-have-you. Instead, I saw my opportunity. I regret it still. I will now fill you in on the Back Story... which I should have started with but because I am not a writer, I don't do things like "outline" or "At least think about, in a general way, what it is you're going to say ahead of time, Dummy".
3 Months Earlier
Yay! I'm 18, time to finally get my license (I had the option of either taking Driver's Ed or having a period off in high school... cigarettes and playing skee ball at the arcade, here I come!) and get my wisdom teeth out. Now (yet another) something that proves I am Super Evolved (along with my proto pinky toe) is that I only had 3 wisdom teeth! I know, right? I think it's fairly obvious that I am the "Next Link" and not just randomly missing parts of my genetic code*5! My genes knew that wisdom teeth are irrelevant and passé and so they just didn't goddamn grow one of them! My missing tooth should be the new fish-with-legs symbol that people put on the backs of their cars. I will fashion you one if you like. The sad news is is that one of the three that did grow, grew into my sinus - SUPER GROSS OUT! It was up in my left sinus and apparently was a bitch to get out. It involved pulverizing it and then sucking the fragments out - man, I wish I had been lucid for that. I tell you guys, I really look forward to being the Gentleman Surgeon during the Apocalypse: “Come on down to Joan's – Trim your beard, yank your tooth and lance your boils- all for only 1 can of petrol!". I should put that on a shirt. Again, I will fashion one if required.
I was "put under" for my operation and you know I actually remember the CD I was listening to before I slipped into the abyss (it was the "Romeo+Juliet" soundtrack, anybody, anybody? "Love me, love me, sayyyyy that you love me!" Any girls of the 90's with me?)
I still have a crush on this Fancy Pretty Lady
She is the embodiment of the 1990's and I think we could be BFFs
What I do not remember, however, is "coming to" 4 times during the operation.
I once watched a woman regain consciousness during a "total hip replacement" surgery (gory business, that). She moaned and groaned and creeped me out but she was quickly tipped back into sleep with no further noises to escape... she didn't die or anything like my weirdo sentence would like you to believe. She was just, you know, quiet.
A Heavily Drugged Joan has Something to Say
In the days leading up to my operation I was joking with my mom about how I was going to demand my teeth back and not let the bastards keep my DNA. You see, DNA was something fairly new and exciting back in those days and you didn't want just anybody cloning you. Well, apparently, I woke up during The Procedure and was pretty vocal about that very same thing. Ha! What a crazy loon. Those poor people who had to deal with me... I'm a pain in the ass as is - I can't imagine me with zero filter.
Now, maybe it was an *incompetent anesthesiologist* who was to blame, but I like to think it was my Super Evolvedness that kept me from metabolizing the drugs properly, either way... I embarrassed myself.
A lot.
I was in the Recovery Room with my dad, laying on a plinth and laughing about the shape of his head when a nurse came in with a small bag. Inside it were two teeth. Here's how it went:
Nurse: Joan, here are your teeth.
Me: Aw, you're nice! Nurse Nice-Nice, is who you are. Do you always give them as souvenirs?
N: No, no... we don't, however, you were very adamant about them being returned to you.
M: Hehe... really? Oh, man!
N: Oh, yes, you told us more than once that us "bastards" weren't going to spy on you or "make dinosaurs".
M: Haha! Oh, man!
N: There are only two as you started out with only three and we had to pulverize the third. We disposed of the pieces in the trash immediately. I wanted to explain it to you thoroughly; do you feel comfortable with the situation now?
Dad: Honest to God, I don't know where she came from.
M: Oh, man!
I clearly had little to add to any conversation at that point and was taken home.
This concludes Part One: The Sad Tooth of the two part series "Regret and Teeth" by Joan Crawford.
What will happen next? Will Our Hero prevail? Did she jump out of the burning car in time? Tune in next time for the startling conclusion - Part Two: The Angry Tooth
*Apparently, Brontosauruses aren't real? http://www.unmuseum.org/dinobront.htm. I didn't read it because it's bullshit; Brontosauruses are real and Pluto is a planet.
**Which I have replaced with a "3 packets of Xylitol" routine. What a horrible name for such a delicious and hopefully healthy chemical.
***It recommends "cockatrice" instead of cockatiel. Which, upon further research, is hilarious as a "cockatrice" is a made up creature. It also recommended "velocipede" for "velociraptor" which makes no goddamn sense at all.
****In that I have never been arrested. But you could just chalk that up to shoddy police-work.
*****Seemed funnier in my head... where I speak in an "Exasperated Italian Grandma" voice. At all times. And I mean all times.
******Exhibit 3 in the poor genetics/missing link debate is a patch of grain-of-rice-sized flesh above my left eye that just never materialized. It's just a little concave divot... of evolution!
ReplyDeleteIncompetent Anesthesiologist is my new band name. As soon as you set "Regrets and Teeth" to music, we'll record it for our upcoming album, Concave Divots of Evolution.
You can play musical saw.
I missed you Joan. That sounds creepy, but i enjoy reading your blog. I'm sure xylitol is a healthy chemical.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWhen the hell did you end up three hours behind me? Geographically, I'm talking, not, y'know, intellectually. Or is your Blogger timestamp just out of whack?
in the end, I came out mostly okay
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!
I must be three times more evolved that you (more if it works exponentially) because my wisdom teeth never came in at all. My friends were having surgery and eating ice cream mandatorily in college while I just got to eat ice cream optionally, hold the surgery.
Seven-year-old Joan drew a peace sign in her name, huh? Cute kid.
I didn't read it because it's bullshit; Brontosauruses are real and Pluto is a planet.
You tell 'em, Joan.
@Stacy - Aw, thanks! I don't think it's creepy (but I am a terrible barometer for such things) and I am glad you liked my post :) I've heard xylitol is "naturally occurring" in the human body but man, that name needs to go. Let's think of a new one... like, say, Yumpa. As in "did you add a yummy lump of Yumpa to your coffee?"
ReplyDelete@Blam - I don't think you understand evolution as I am presenting it! Do you have wisdom teeth and they just failed to "come down" or do you actually not have any? I don't want to make you feel bad but one of these scenarios speaks very well of you and the other is something I wouldn't share in public. Oh, man you better be in the former group or I will be some ticked at having to respect you a little more!
My friends were having surgery...
Well, you must have made a lovely picture; you all alone at the sock hop*, congratulating yourself, out-loud, to the empty space around you. Hehehehe! >:D
*or whatever it is they did for fun before "talkies" were invented.
ReplyDelete@Joan: Do you have wisdom teeth and they just failed to "come down" or do you actually not have any?
To tell you the truth, I don't recall. I do remember asking my dentist, who around college was probably still my uncle*, if it was weird that they hadn't come in yet, and he said something like "Not everybody's wisdom teeth come in, but, Brian, in your case it's definitely because you're weird." [*Or really the other way around — I mean, the dentist who was my uncle when my uncle was my dentist never stopped being my uncle but when he retired he did stop being my dentist. You'd have appreciated his sense of humor, Joan.]
@Joan: you all alone at the sock hop
It was called a discothecque, a.k.a. "The 'Sco" — and apparently it still is, as it's the first hit in a Google search on that nickname (although it didn't have a Web page at the time since there were no such things as Web pages).
@Blam - It must have been marvelous to see you cutting a rug in the candlelight at the 'sco: People all about with their "pockets full of posies" to ward off the plague and you with your hardtack biscuits that made you so irresistible to the famished debutantes.
ReplyDeleteYour comments are the hardtack biscuits of my blog :)
ReplyDeleteAlways happy to be of sustenance, Mrs. Crawford... I'm glad that even in your fevered fictions you can't help but cast me, truthfully, as a ladyfolk magnet.
Famished Debutantes is totally my new band name.
ReplyDeletePS: Isn't xylitol what you take for headaches brought on by the last Coldplay album?
THIS!
ReplyDelete*note to self* make sure to have Joan Crawford, Gentleman Surgeon, on my apocalypse team
AAAAAND now i have that song in my head and also want to go listen to the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack- which i am 90% sure we still have in our cd case.
Finally, Pluto is a planet, but Brontosaurus is not a dinosaur. FACT!
ReplyDeleteYet in the Disney short where Goofy messes around with a devolution ray, Pluto becomes a dinosaur.
[This would be a 100% true fact if it had actually happened.]
Yeah i'm with Anne. Eff the brontosaurus. IT WAS NEVER A REAL THING (unlike Pluto, which was a planet and then had it's title stripped. Like some sort of body builder who was just beaten in a contest with Ahnald. Back when he was a lump of muscles)
ReplyDeleteAnd i can beat Blam. I, for sure, only had 2 wisdom teeth. The other two (much like the brontosaurus) never existed
What horrible Pandora's Box have I opened here? Two "Brontosaurs Deniers" - one with only 2 wisdom teeth! That's it! Comment Moderating is ON! :D
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete@Sarah: Eff the brontosaurus. IT WAS NEVER A REAL THING
THEN WHAT DID FRED FLINTSTONE EAT?
Joan, I wish you posted more often, but when the posts are this good, I almost don't mind.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to explain it to you thoroughly; do you feel comfortable with the situation now?
You must have really freaked them out for the nurse to come out and be so considerate to you and your teeth.
Dad: Honest to God, I don't know where she came from.
I wonder if he meant that literally? Like, that wasn't your dad, just some guy you glommed onto in recovery and was all like, "Nurse, I have no idea where this woman came from, but you should probably try to find her family before she steals my teeth."
"Gentlemn Surgeon" is totally my new band name.
PS I'm with Anne. Pluto=planet, but Brontosaurus is a fictional creation of our misspent youth. It took me a while to accept that, but search your feelings: you know it to be true.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if he meant that literally?
Ha! Teebore wins.
@Teebore - Ha! ...just some guy you glommed onto in recovery... That could very well be, given my history... I am delighted you used the term "glommed onto" as I was beginning to fear it was a strange colloquialism that what just used in my family. Other terms I that I am fearful that are unknown to the "outside" are things such as: "Brush your snags" and "Shuffle off to Buffalo" which is what my parents said to me when they want me to brush my teeth and go to bed, respectively.
ReplyDelete...but search your feelings: you know it to be true.
I get very panicky and volatile when backed into a philosophical corner! I cannot give up the Brontosaurus and the very idea that I am being asked to makes me dig my claws in deeper! Have you no respect for the diorama?! Surely you made a diorama in school and a Brontosaurus was featured? Does this mean nothing to you? What is reality but that what we accept to be true? THE DIORAMA, TEEBORE! Furthermore - spellcheck is confounded by terms like "opposable" and "velociraptor" -- do you know what it never hesitates on? BRONTOSAURUS! I am alone in this?! Where are my "flat-Earthers"? Where are my "four-humours-control-the-body" folk?!
Other terms I that I am fearful that are unknown to the "outside" are things such as: "Brush your snags" and "Shuffle off to Buffalo"
ReplyDeleteShuffe off to Buffalo is one I've used before, but I did spend a small amount of time living in Buffalo as a child, so that might be why.
Brush your snags might be all you, though.
Surely you made a diorama in school and a Brontosaurus was featured? Does this mean nothing to you?
I never made a dinosaur diorama. A Little House in the Big Woods diorama, sure, but not a dinosaur one. And if I had, it would have included cool dinorsaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Anklosaurus or Pachycephalosaurus, and not lame ones like the Brontosaurus.
do you know what it never hesitates on? BRONTOSAURUS!
I'm not sure you want to throw your lot in with Blogger's spellchecker...
I think you and your phrenological friends are just going to have to accept the reality of the Brontosaurus' non-existence.
ReplyDeleteI think you and your phrenological friends are just going to have to accept the reality of the Brontosaurus' non-existence.
And in related news: Mad-cow disease is back in the news. Happenstance or coincidence?
This interview is over!
ReplyDeleteHey! Your cockatiel's name is Buddy? My cockatrice's name is Buddy! Except he is wingless, so I don't know that you can still call that a cockatrice. But I do anyway. And also, Buddy isn't poisonous. Unless you equate 'poisoned' and 'pregnant.'
ReplyDeleteOn wisdom teeth and quantity thereof, I fall into the hitherto unmentioned triplet category. I have always imagined my body chose to absorb the other one and repurpose its raw material for strengthening the bones of my best karate-chopping hand. Or that maybe one day I'll lay an egg.
@YBS - strengthening the bones of my best karate-chopping hand. Or that maybe one day I'll lay an egg.
ReplyDelete:D times a hundred
I was violently ill for almost the entirety of my first pregnancy, so I kinda do equate it with being poisoned :) I also had a strangely intense fixation on spinach. I ate goddamn steamed spinach every night and loved it. Before we did the old "Pee-On-a-Stick confirmation ritual" when I was first knocked up, I looked at my then fiancé one night and said "You need to buy me oranges! Right now! As many as you can carry home! And sunflower seeds, yes! I love sunflower seeds, aren't they the best? See if they have a tub of them! Go, why are you standing here talking to me!?" When he returned with 4 pounds of oranges, I ate them much in the way a chimp does: Ravenously, repulsively - tossing the husks aside in a pile. I finished the bag in under 10 minutes. "Are you feeling okay?" asked my Future Husband as he stared in amazement. I replied with: "Never better! You know what's awesome? Hard boiled eggs! And Cadbury Creme Eggs! For the love of God - do we have any!?"
A few years later, we were at a wedding and one of the guys there was telling this incredibly romantic and spiritual story about how he knew his wife was pregnant before she did. We were all "Aww!" and then I was like "He knew too; I ate 4 pounds of oranges in the manner a mental patient would!" and everyone was like "Hahaha, cute!" and I felt all "Oh, we are so sweet and connected too!" and then my husband, thinking I couldn't see him, goes to another guy: "Well, yeah, that and her boobs went *mimes giant breasts*"
Haha! Jerk!
I find myself in strange agreement with Ms. Joan Crawford, eh, who spooke thusly:
ReplyDeleteI ate goddamn steamed spinach every night and loved it.
I partake frequently of the stuff myself, both raw in a fresh kitten salad or steamed adventurously and garnished liberally with vitreous humour and lime. Eh.
Aw, kitten salad sounds pretty cute, really :) Here's something you might like: I was once in a tropical depression (ha! have at it) and there was a cockatiel, owned by my neighbors, who was left in the screened-in porch during the storm. Well, this was a very negligent thing to do as the little bird had his eyeball knocked out of his little bird head. It was on a little string, apparently. I guess you'd define the spectacle as dinner theater?
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