This is a story about an unusual day in my life. First of all, I have to mention that my days are out of whack because I work on third shift, so this particular day started at 4:00 PM, when I woke up. I was immediately greeted with the usual questions of ‘What’s for dinner?’ and ‘Will you take us to the mall?’. I gave the patent responses of ‘I don’t know’ and ‘No’ respectively, thus forcing the kids to rummage through the pantry and fridge while grumbling about their lack of social life.1
Fast forward a couple of hours and I’m at work. I saved some vacations days, so it’s my last day of work before the Christmas holiday. I should have been taking it easy and coasting towards quitting time, but no, I like to set goals and push myself. By the end of the shift, I was sweaty and exhausted. Both were easily cured with the standard remedy of a long, hot shower.2
I drove back home. Normally I would stay up for an hour or so and then go to sleep. I decide to stay up and surprise my lovely wife, Cindy, when she came home from her job. Thus, being pleasantly surprised, Cindy decided to celebrated my verticalness by going out for lunch. She wanted chili and we were off to our favorite fast food joint. I suggested that we share a burger and fries to supplement our fare. Cindy agreed, but said, “No onions for me.” She had to go to a meeting shortly afterwards. I was only going back home to sleep, so I said I would eat all the onions. Raw onions in the chili. Raw onions on the burger. They were strong, but good. 3
We had a nice meal and talked. As I was finishing off the french fries, I bit into a big soft one and CRUNCH! I removed the morsel to find a tooth! There was a tooth in my french fry! What a sick and cruel prank to play. Who would do something like that? My tongue soon revealed that it wasn’t a prank. It was my tooth! More than half of my left incisor was gone. No pain. No warning. Nothing! It just broke off. Last year I had dental work done on that tooth and the dentist was concerned that it may have been weakened by the procedure. I guess he was right.4
So there I was looking like a cast member from HEE HAW. I was supposed to go to a meeting later that night after I woke up from a sleep I had negligently put off. I crossed my fingers and called my dentist…and called my dentist…and called my dentist. He had a wonderfully friendly message from his receptionist saying they were away from the phone and asked me to leave my name and number and they would… I called the general information number of the dental group and asked if my dentist was there or not.5
“Oh yes,” I was assured, “He’s just at lunch and would be back any minute.” LUNCH! I hated the word. So I waited. I decided to brush my teeth, just in case I could get in on short notice.6
“You still smell like onions,” Cindy reassured me. I brushed them again.7
“Still smell like onions.”8
Great!9
I called my dentist…and called my dentist…and…HEY, a live voice! I explained my dilemma and the friendly voiced receptionist said she would check the schedule. I was silently praying, please get me in today, please don’t get me in today. I stunk of onions!10
“Can you come in now?” I hesitated (great…just great) and said yes almost reluctantly.11
“How soon can you get here?”12
I told her ten minutes. It was an optimistic estimate, but I sensed that there was a narrow margin of opportunity by the way she spoke.13
“O.K., see you in ten minutes.”14
Wonderful!15
I had to race through four miles of lunch hour traffic (there’s that word again!) in ten minutes.16
I may have set a new record for myself. I hit every red light along the way and it still only took twelve minutes. They took me in and put me in THE chair and told me the dentist would see me in a few minutes. They always let you sit there alone for a few minutes to contemplate your fate and mull over all kinds of worst case scenarios. I had been awake for twenty-two hours and was starting to hallucinate. The patterns on the wallpaper were moving.17
The dentist came in. After the obligatory greeting and usual questions, I blurted out an apology before he started to examine me. I explained that had I known what was going to happen, I would have skipped all the onions at lunch. Heck, I would have skipped lunch altogether! I gestured by waving the air in front of my mouth as I spoke. I noticed that he and his assistant sat a little farther away than usual.18
He poked and prodded and said a loose piece had to be removed. Funny though, no matter how hard he pried and pulled, it didn’t seem loose to me.19
“Looks like we’ll have to numb it.”20
Great!21
Another visit from my old friend, THE NEEDLE! Having survived many injections in the past, I was reasonably confident that I would again. After establishing that I was sufficiently numb, he brought out his old friend, THE DRILL. As he reduced my tooth to flying bits of shrapnel and odd smelling dust, my eyes suddenly bulged out of my head!22
“Are you O.K.?” He asked.23
I assured him that I was and told him he had hit my gum with THE DRILL.24
“Maybe we have to numb it some more,” he said as he eyed THE NEEDLE once again. I reassured him that I was fine and he revved up THE DRILL.25
After much pushing and pulling and fitting and grinding, I was the proud owner of a brand new temporary crown. He warned me not to bite down on it and to brush and floss carefully around it. so basically, it was non functional. Its sole purpose was to allow me to smile, but I didn’t have anything to smile about. He told me it would hold me over until I could come back for a permanent crown. Come back? Why couldn’t he put in a permanent crown right away? Now I have to go back again and relive the experience, as if it’s not already indelibly etched into my memory forever.26
By the time I got home, it was 3:30 PM. I had been up for almost twenty four hours and I only had two and one half hours before I had to leave for my meeting. After grabbing two hours of sleep, I popped a NO-DOZ, chased it with a MOUNTAIN DEW and hit the road. I had to drop off the kids at the mall (couldn’t get out of it this time - Cindy retrieved them) and I stopped to get a large cappuccino for the meeting. Four hours later, I’m back home and wide awake. By 2:00 AM, I had gone thirty four hours with only a two hour nap and was finally winding down. I decided to try to sleep and was quite successful. It was a very long day.27
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