Not daily, but once in awhile, like October 8, 2011 for instance.

VERY LONG TOOTH'S DREAM

I go to Dr. Hirirpi for a temporary crown on my root canal-ed tooth. When he comes into the room, he initiates small talk by cheerily asking me what I have been up to. As I am retired, I lay there thinking a minute. Am I up to anything? My ongoing tortuous grappling with the homeowners association board lumbers into mind. "You don't want to know" I tell him.

He lays his tools on a tray. There is no reply.

Maybe I put it too strongly. Maybe he doesn't want to know. On the other hand, he could be momentarily deeply engrossed in medical contemplation. Teeth, nerves, caps, drilling, grinding, implants, posts - busy wending his way into the province of the human mouth.

"Yeah, well... I bought a condo and dealing with the HOA has turned out to be more complicated than I thought." I figured that shouldn't scare him off and would leave room for him to offer a non-commital reply about the vagaries of life or how an HOA is like a set of teeth, periodic decay, restorations... or maybe something about a roll of the dice.

But, no reply.

Hey, what the fi!derft did he start this conversation for? I know durn well if I brought up something about basketball, football or ping pong, we'd be deep into it already. Then he  has me open my mouth, so the point becomes moot. While he works, the doc hums (actually, its more like: do do doo doot do do doooo) along (somewhat) with the almost inaudible popular tunes that are piped into the room. He doo doo doos in unconnected and unfinished spurts while working inside my head with his picks and probes.

Hirirpi has some trouble getting the crown fitted right because I have a "very long tooth," plus some gum recession. He reminds me of this about seven times during the procedure. I mull it over. If I were native American, I now know what I would be called.

Before long, he is talking basketball with Lacey, the dental technician. She is on one side of me, he on the other. They talk right past my nose, each mouth about 8 inches away. I don't actually follow their conversation, but I do hear words going back and forth - a bit like a tennis match, but without the heat, sweat and jumping around. "Three pointer dribble basket time out ha ha game over four lane uphill snow shovel slip slide Bessie bed room yesterday snack celery birthday ten hours ha ha condenser five o'clock no hot water."

I don't know what the score is, because, as usual, I am getting relaxed despite the paraphernalia they cram into my mouth. I like dentist chairs. I come to realize I probably should have had therapy throughout my life so I could lie down in the middle of the day. And today, because the tooth they are working on is dead dead dead, there will be no needle.

Speaking of dead, getting ever more comfortable, Very Long Tooth sees the wind moving outside the tipi and begins his dream catching. Or is it a vision quest? Very Long Tooth isn't sure: he hasn't been at this (despite his name) very long.

Settling back into the chair, he images two different technicians working on him. One of them is quite unusual looking, in a fun, grotesque kind of way. Let's call him Murg.

Murg, we learn by the conversation, is not happy with his present career path and is apprenticing part-time on the night shift at Acie Arm & A Leg, a cadaver chop shop. The pay isn't great to start, but he has been assured, once he goes full-time and gets promoted to organ donors, he will do quite nicely.

What do they have you doing now? Hand me that compress. They have me on the anatomy specials... you know, the stuff students get at medical and art schools. Art schools? Pass me the number five. They cut apart human remains for art school students? We don't call them "remains" - it's supposed to be demeaning. We call them items. Whatever. They cut apart human items to study at art schools these days!? Well, yes. There are some teachers who still believe that without a firm understanding of the real world, an artist wouldn't have anything worthwhile to say in any avante garde kinda way...

Very Long Tooth's attention begins to wander. He thinks about starting a school of his own: one that would teach sensitive or brainy types how to carry on basic conversations in sportseeze.

Drifting again, he sees himself in the future, sitting in a similar chair, but under a different dentist. Dr. Dental, having taken some advanced courses, maintains a certified LoboOtomy franchise as part of his practice. Long Tooth has been experiencing some brain fog lately and a podiatrist friend told him to consider some sort of transplant. "Not the whole thing," advised the foot man, "Maybe just a section or two."

It turns out that Long Tooth has minor Over-coagulated Cranial Buleemiaphasia in the southwest hemisphere. This was determined by Dr. Dental's intensive and thorough 32 point multiple choice evaluation.

A patented cranial circumferincision device is positioned with pinpoint accuracy at Long Tooth's head and the Dental/LoboOtomy chair is slowly rotated until the seamless incision is complete. (Needless to say, a special dose of novacaine had been properly administered.) A deceptively simple looking surgical tool, the Lid Bar, in Lazar's skillful hands, is used to "pop the top" and expose the gray matter gold. As the LoboOtomy brochure puts it, "Neat as you please and considerably faster!"

Long Tooth's vision is short on details, but he knows that part of his brain is removed (or pushed aside) and a "new" section added and wired up in a thrice. What section is installed during a typical LoboOtomy procedure depends, of course, on one's medical plan, what the market will bear, and what is available. Lucky Long Tooth ends up with a 512 gram import from Gervinia which leaves him with the time-consuming inclination to bow politely to every tree he passes, but improves his math skills considerably.

Back in the 21st century, Dr. Hirirpi is summarizing the procedure and, in a nice way, blaming my tooth for his difficulty. I want to console him, accepting full blame, but before I can he is done and gone to a distant cubicle.

Lacey, guiding me to my feet and the front desk, is apologetic. But I will have none of it. Another successful dental daydream completed - another lovely distant world explored!

10

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