Thank you On-Star

Thank you On-Star, for unlocking my doors remotely because both my arms just got torn off in a tractor-trailer accident.

Wow, that's some great copy, Peter. Do you think we can enhance the tape and get the sound of the blood spattering on the sidewalk? That really says we're there for you when your whole family has just driven off the side of a cliff. Oh, we have that on tape too? Roll it, we'll use it during the winter season. Summer is for suffocating babies and nothing says Thanksgiving like that classic we have, you know the one of Uncle Frank having that fatal heart attack.

On-Star advertising pain, coming to a radio commercial filled with screaming babies and dying relatives near you.

I think I just realized why I can't stand medical shows, people in pain, grotesque mutilations disguised as entertainment.

Do we look at the 700 pound woman with pity, revulsion, marvel or does a tiny part of us spark with a dark gleam?

We aren't like that. Horror films scare us because we can pretend the monsters are far away and don't really live under our beds and in our mirrors. But anyone can be a victim and entertainment is so much less entertaining when you realize how close the pain is all the time.

I mean I can hang with the horror flicks and I like to be scared occasionally but I never realized why I didn't get them like some people. Perhaps I still don't, but I know why they are hard for me now...



Dentists and Plastic Cowboys on a Blue Vinyl Chair

Until I was twelve, I didn’t know that to enter that room was something less than Hell for others. A sucker seemed ironic and dangerous, so I always picked up something solid, some small toy for the trip home.

All I knew was that to eat something after that tense hour of sweat, pain, and fear would make me toss my stomach and maybe ruin one of the shiny new fillings in my overly soft teeth. We would eat McDonald’s cheeseburgers later in the day when most of the Novocain had worn off.

I still remember the tender bun and my careful chewing of the rubbery pickles. We were poor, and to eat fast food was an unimaginable treat. Still, I cried when I knew we were going to the dentist. I dreamt about the day when that bastard would fill my last tooth and I would be free.

Ten and dreaming about a mouth full of silver.

Perhaps the mix of power and pain are what drove my dentist into his frenzy of hatred. Maybe he saw hour after hour of young fear. What is the toll of watching day after day of unintentionally inflicted pain transforming innocent features into masks of agony?
Imagine dreams of tousled hair and wide eyes in tears looking at you in accusation. The bitterness would grow and twist into what I realize now was the frustrated gleam of hate. That was my first glimpse of that emotion. The hate of this man scares me to this day.

All the fear in the world is on a blue vinyl chair chained with fresh paper linen.

A bright rectangular light beats down on your face. In this chair, you’re not allowed to close your eyes as the high whine deepens in sync to the beating of your heart and the bit works into a small molar over and over.

This is a tired age. We have been raped by our TVs and left for dead on the information superhighway. How can any one experience be significant anymore?

I must describe the treasure chest in the exit room of the office. It was made with laminated cardboard and was probably only a foot-and-half long and eight inches deep. It was brown with stickered gold bolts and a plastic-hinged lid. It was magnificent at the time.

One toy I remember well was a blue cowboy seated on a yellow plastic horse. He was molded with bowlegs so you could snap him on and off his mount. All the other toys were wrapped in gumball plastic.

The waiting room itself had a number of comic books oriented around fighting tooth decay. Plaque man with his evil co-horts Gingivitis and Decay were constantly defeated by Captain Fluoride and his magic Flosso (a floss lasso) or some such nonsense.

There were bright chairs and a glass window for the receptionist. There was a stand-out poster among the many on the walls. It splashed an inspirational message about brushing between meals on a gorgeous mountainside. It was the last thing I could see before going into the operating theater.

The room had I taste as I recall.

Once every six months we would get fluoride gel squirted onto U-shaped sponges and inserted into our mouths for a treatment. I would sit there feeling this pink paste seeping into the deepest corners of my cheeks for twenty minutes or so.

Years later, I would discover there were grape flavors and even a bubble-gum flavor in some dental offices. The taste never quite left my mouth. Even now, I can feel the hot spit drip onto my shirt and the cakey feeling on my teeth because I could not swallow the flavor and we weren’t allowed to spit.

When he took the sponge out we were allowed only one 3 ounce cup of water with which to rinse. The water came in a Dixie cup. It wasn’t one with the jokes printed on it. You learned to make three ounces go a long way.

Sometimes after a particularly grueling filling you would spit out chunks of tooth and the water thickened almost to a morass of blood and particle. The metal filling would feel smooth and shiny on the quaking tongue.

The tongue itself seemed to be an object of unspeakable nuisance to the man. If it would wander anywhere near the drill or move at all during a procedure cursing would follow. There was little speaking on a patient’s part. I would try not to move when he drilled or scraped or poked and prodded.

My fear would often lead me to knead my hands together in a way that was obviously unsatisfactory patient behavior. He once snapped during a filling that was as sharply hurtful as anything I had ever felt in my young life. “Quit squirming or I’ll drill until I hit a nerve…then you’ll know pain.”

That was an early incident. The wild look of fear only drove him to greater excess. The last terrible incident came when I had just turned eleven. I think he sensed the end of his time with us was near. My disapproval was becoming more vocal and my younger sister had no love of the man, either.

The visit started with the usual pick-up from school. My mother wouldn’t let us know about the trips until after school because I would be a wreck for the entire day. Given enough lead-time, I could work myself into a debilitating fever and nausea.

She would notify the office at Greene Township Elementary School after we had arrived and arrange to have us paged before busses were called at the end of the day. For some reason I would only think positive things about a page at the end of the boring school day.

Maybe it was the glamour of hearing your name on the intercom.

It was when he got distracted by the second filling that I sensed things going south. I had sweated out the first thirty minutes of drilling with uncharacteristic stoicism. “I think I should take another look at that molar,” he said to himself as he changed to the fine bit on the drill.

I hated the small bit. They smelled like burnt tooth and the pain was a boring pin-prick into my jaw. The dull ache was much preferred if you had to choose your pain. So, I spent the next twenty minutes waiting for the drill to start on this next tooth.

The whole thing was complicated by the fact he was in process of extracting four other teeth. We were making room for an addition or something in there. Ultimately, I think the man was planning to put a Jacuzzi in the back of my throat.

“It hurts.” I wasn’t breathing so well while I choked back the tears.

“One shot of Novocain is plenty.” He had just finished the second filling.

“Can I come back for the pulling of the other teeth?”

“It’s almost over.” Three extractions to go. I could feel everything.

I can still feel the vinyl blue and slippery with sweat. He picked up the gleaming silver plier-like tool and leaned in.

The metal tips slid wetly around my stretched mouth and clamped down on one of the offending teeth. The pressure built up and the pulling began on his end. It went on for a long time.

He had to push on my forehead with his free gloved hand. The rubber slid a little on my sweaty forehead every now and then. It would send a new wave of sharp pain crashing into me on top the dull, throbbing pressure.

His fingers wound into the tousled brown hair on my forehead. The tooth finally gave with a hiss and I gurgled in relief as he stared at the bloody ivory. “Boy, you’ve got some long roots.”

The tooth clanked into the sink, and I still had two more to go until I got my three ounces of water.

I knew the pain of being small and helpless in this world.

To be eleven and to find that there is no savior for the weak is a dark truth to learn.

Hate is everywhere.

For me, it was chained with fresh paper linen to a blue vinyl chair.

Sky-blue.