One of the signs of aging...

....(at least in here..out there you have options).

If you have a wayward tooth, then one of the only solutions here is for you is to have it pulled. Especially if it is borderline abscessed. Today I was granted the thrill of being in the thrall of this activity, truly, madly and deeply..and love was not coming to town. As the dentist initially started giving the anesthesia (which I see as an oxymoron now--why should something that numbs hurt so bad?) I was remissed about a part of me that has been hanging in there for so long (at least on through Panama and the years of the military) the fights!...the flights!...the wrongs and the rights! The situ in here is such that once slated to see this elusive dental person, you better go lest you find yourself in a serious world of hurt and months from relief, yet an hour from tying the old floss around the cell door (they weigh in at 300lbs) and having your cellie slam it because you just can't muster up the courage to look it straight in the face (no pun mind you but I did say a mouthful).

So off I went this morning at 0630 hrs to pay the pied piper's wage of the prosaic prison price that can cost one much in the collection plate of pity. He's wrenching and I'm trying to act the big boy. I'm praying fervently, I might add, because this big boy stuff is a load of crap--especially when he stops yanking and twisting. I look at him and sweat is forming at his brow right above his nice trim teeth (yeah I can see all 32). I gander to the right and there with all her choppers is the diligent hygienist using that face shield now splattered with you know who's blood. I decide on a witty remark (what, me?..get out of town). Actually I quote Hemingway (I think...after all I was under a bit of duress) "What's wrong? Will it not gently into the night?"...coming out like whoommwmomweinnmskea? Still though the hygienist looks at me like, 'unbelievable! A convict quoting a classic'...as if we all are morons. I am--for being in this chair--at least the cell door would've been a one hitter quitter. This debacle is closer to loosing my bowels then all those banks I robbed.

The dentist takes leave to beeline to "the other room"...I'm hoping he didn't hate old Papa's line because he comes back with what looks like a pair of lineman's pliers...as a matter of fact it looks like the pair I took to the pawnshop 15 years ago! Oh the irony! That's like a double irony don't you think? Back to work and after another..say 17.45 minutes...I'm getting drenched now by his prolific water shedding running down the edges of his face shield and into my ..well mouth probably , but shirtfront for sure. My legs are doing their own thing now...that terrible tango of repressed pain while reclining in the chair of torture. Soon he withdraws his weapon of periodontal destruction and I go for Shakespeare. I stammer (everything is that now), "out damn spot, eh doc?" He gives me the withering look, that certainly says that I have done a goodly job in flossing and caring for my formidable little teethes. Still though it is only the hygienist that queries across her face the recognition that I have now moved on to Lady Macbeth in my terror packed stupor of tooth removal. Believe it or not it is only another 25 minutes before I hear the break...and I ain't talking 'bout coffee either...crack! What a horrible feeling! The tear leaking down my cheek is not for the pain--although deserving of it for sure--it is because a part of me is gone now...that is after he has to do some drilling ...splitting it into threes he says in order to facilitate a more easier removal. I'm thinking about putting his head in the cell door location by the way, but my violent days are behind me, and mostly I am grateful as he plucks out the remaining pieces of an otherwise salvageable tooth had I been in a dental chair out there where you guys are.

As I sit up to wipe away the blood from my face, there is an inmate whose been lying in the chair next to me all the while with a look of abject terror on his face because he's next. Perhaps though he didn't listen to his father... he told me you don't have to floss your teeth, just the ones you want to keep...an adage that went through the best of times and the worst of times in a very short time span today. I got up and asked the dentist if he ever saw "The Marathon Man" with Dustin Hoffman and the Angel of Death Josef Mengali as a deranged German Gestapo dentist...he replied  with a pretty good impersonation of a sinisterly implication that yes he remembered that movie...So there you go..from Hemingway to Shakespeare to Hollywood.

As I hobbled from medical, GOD reminded me that losing that tooth, albeit tragic on its own merit, can't compete with those whom are losing limbs in wars, minds to disease, loved ones to divorce...and so in HIS infinite compassion pointed me up to think on HIM, and all I have to look forward to once rid of such corruptibleness as this old flesh. PRAISE HIM for that always. Beside he says if that foot offend thee cut it off, better to enter in halt and lame....

later..dougie boy