I can’t remember the first time I learned about Jesus Christ. I try to peek into the farthest corners of my mind to find a place and time that He was not there and I can’t find a single instant when I didn’t know Him.
Children possess almost a Santa Clausian vision of Jesus Christ: a man who is kind, who loves children, who gave them the gift of life, the gift of heaven. Christ felt very real to me when I was young but in hindsight I hardly understood a thing about Him. Some might argue that I understood the most important thing about Him: He loved me.
It wasn’t till a little later in life, perhaps around adolescence that I began to wonder if God and Jesus Christ don’t give out their love as liberally as I had once thought. I was very aware of sin. In fact I was consumed by it. I spent years of my life believing that there was a right way to do everything: to pour your cereal, make your bed, do your homework, talk to people, etc. and as a result I started every day sitting over a bowl of cereal feeling quite sure that I was going to hell.
How, I don’t know, but somewhere between 8 and 12 I started to view God as the God of the Old Testament, the one who is always beating the crap out of Israel for doing stupid things, for never listening, for flagrantly disobeying day after day. In my mind I was Israel, and I was bad, very bad.
Many things came as a result of this closely held, albeit false belief. First off, I spent every waking moment feeling guilty. Not only was I guilty for things I’d done, including things that don’t fall under even the widest umbrella of sin, but I even felt guilty for things I hadn’t done. For things other people had done. I don’t know how that works. I have no logical explanation, but I just felt like everything was my fault and somehow I had to pay.
Secondly, I felt that because I was responsible for everything wrong in the world that I myself didn’t really deserve to be happy. In fact, I had no concept of what happiness really was at that point in my life. When I was 14 I believe I thought happiness had something to do with chocolate ice cream and someday going to Oxford University and being fallen in love with by some bloke wearing tweed.
Thirdly, I believed that life was really just a long, sadistic, laborious, and ultimately unattainable checklist of minutia.
Fourthly, if a single item on the minutia list was not checked, it was straight to hell.
Lastly, though I could go on and on, I had no concept of or real belief in the Atonement. In my twisted little brain it was just another thing to feel guilty about, to flay myself over. I had no idea why Jesus Christ had ever done anything He did.
It’s another story, another book even, but I suffered from depression for many years. As anyone who’s experienced it knows, depression is a strange and incalculable mix of things. Yes mental illness runs like white water rapids in my family. Yes I had completely false and damaging beliefs about the gospel. Yes I had a bad body image. Yes I had horrible menstrual cycles and hormonal swings. Yes I was lonely and always struggled when it came to the opposite sex. Yes I was a perfectionist and had completely unreasonable expectations for myself and others. And yes there is such a thing as Crazy. I’d write a travel guide but I don’t want anyone booking a trip there.
For the purposes of this story, the only point I’d really like to make about my whole experience with depression is that I was in a dark, dark place for a long time. Winston Churchill called it “The Black Dog”. When I was young, living in Bangkok, Thailand with my family I had nightmares about falling into one of the holes in the sidewalk under a rickety grating, straight into the sewer. For me, depression was like a pitch black abyss that I kept falling into again and again. Sometimes I’d be in the hole for days, sometimes months. But even when I was atop, the fear of it remained.
Early on when I was sitting at the bottom of the hole with no way of getting out I wondered many things. Though most of my thoughts were as dark as the void around me there was a single flicker of light, not strong enough to illuminate my escape, but bright enough to remind me that somewhere it was day. That light was Jesus Christ. Never in all the darkness I endured, in all the agony and hopelessness, never since I was a small girl who believed that Christ loved me, never did I ever doubt His existence, His reality or His promises. I knew Jesus Christ was real, I knew it and even in the pitchest of pitch blacks, I could not deny it.
He was the reason I never followed through on any of my nightmarish plans to end my own life. I knew this life was not the end and that I’d probably be just as sad on the other side. I knew that Christ didn’t want me to and that was just enough to stay me.
One time when I was sitting in darkness a series of questions popped into my head: What if I could be happy one day? What if I could be mentally stable? What if I could fall in love and have a healthy relationship? What if I could learn how to be a good Mom? What if my life was completely different than it is right now?
I thought for a good long while about it and decided that if there was even the remotest chance that any of those things could happen that I would give up anything in the world for it, that I would suffer any pain, perform any task and wait any length of time for just the possibility of being happy. I said to myself, I would endure ten more years of this if I thought I could be happy and stable and married. I would endure even longer if I thought that it could happen ever in this life or the next.
Little did I know that at that very moment I experienced my first real understanding of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I decided to hope that something good was possible even though I had no proof that it would ever happen. I decided that life was worth it for even the possibility that something better lay ahead.
Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world. Yea, even at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.
Hope for a better world. That was the gift, the gift Christ gave. Until that moment I’d never really believed that something better was possible and without first believing that the gift existed there had been no way for me to receive it. The first inkling of an atonement had begun to swell inside me and fill my inner void. I’d never known. I’d never known.
I’m not sure how, but somehow over the course of many rocky and sometimes excruciating years, I began to learn the truth about the atonement of Jesus Christ. Of course, I’d always known the correct Sunday School answers, but I’d never really understood and never fully believed. Somehow, almost magically, Christ turned back into the man who loved me as a child. He’d always loved me, I’d just forgotten.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Buried Life (excerpt)
(to be fair, some of this was not written today but it makes more sense if I start at the beginning)...
The basement is an impossible labyrinth of hallways, doors, rooms, closets and dead-ends. Originally built in 1919 the basement of the science building at Adams University was never meant to hold more than a furnace and cleaning supplies. As time wore on and the University thrived, space of any kind became an asset the University could no longer take for granted. The basement was renovated over and over again, each time with a different purpose in mind until it finally arrived at its current state: a functional, though nightmarishly complicated maze where the Physics students and their mentors would thrive.
Like clockwork, at the beginning of each school year in the still blistering heat of fall, the physics basement becomes what the physics seniors call "the drain". The basement is so monikered because of all the helpless freshman and new faculty the basement collects who have become hopelessly lost. Having somehow wandered down into the labyrinth from the safety of above where classrooms have numbers and hallways are linear, these "drainers" are now wandering in and out of small rooms like frightened sheep whom the physics clan must then safely herd back out into the light of day.
Long debates can be heard in the fluorescently lit rooms of the basement over which takes longer to master, the Schrodinger equation or the labyrinth. As the physics students play their never ending game of verbal chess, a game in which everyone achieves check-mate at one time or another but no one seems to win, no one seems to question their ability to master the Schrodinger equation, the labyrinth or any other curveball the universe may see fit to throw at them.
Here in the basement, genius conquers all.
The facade of the science building is of red brick and stone. It is large, stately, and uncomplicated. The building is of simple design. It is a large rectangle with a length to width ratio of 3:2 with the longest side being about the length of a football field. There are four entrances to the building, one for each side of the rectangle. Each entrance begins with a rectangular spreading of stone steps up to a large double width ten foot door. The door at the main entrance of the building is carved mahogany. One of the university's alums from 1890, Robert Tillman, had become a world renowned sculptor and woodcraftsman. He was commissioned by the university to carve the doors in the panel style of the baptistry doors in Florence, Italy but without the same nod to the bible and the catholic faith.
Adams University was, according to the standards of the time, exceedingly liberal and non-religious in its views and aims. The presiding authorities at Adams didn't have any known quarrels with God. In fact, many of them were devoutly religious. However they were convinced that for the United States to continue to be the power it was in the world that science and inquiry were the key. For those who were want to think in such terms, "faith without works is dead" and they certainly believed that the future of their university was dead without deep and comprehensive scientific inquiry.
Tillman was an artist not a scientist. But to his credit and perhaps due to his mother's early lessons in the woods around his childhood home in Maine that gave him a deep and abiding respect for nature, Tillman saw beauty in scientific subjects that no one else could see.
The basement is an impossible labyrinth of hallways, doors, rooms, closets and dead-ends. Originally built in 1919 the basement of the science building at Adams University was never meant to hold more than a furnace and cleaning supplies. As time wore on and the University thrived, space of any kind became an asset the University could no longer take for granted. The basement was renovated over and over again, each time with a different purpose in mind until it finally arrived at its current state: a functional, though nightmarishly complicated maze where the Physics students and their mentors would thrive.
Like clockwork, at the beginning of each school year in the still blistering heat of fall, the physics basement becomes what the physics seniors call "the drain". The basement is so monikered because of all the helpless freshman and new faculty the basement collects who have become hopelessly lost. Having somehow wandered down into the labyrinth from the safety of above where classrooms have numbers and hallways are linear, these "drainers" are now wandering in and out of small rooms like frightened sheep whom the physics clan must then safely herd back out into the light of day.
Long debates can be heard in the fluorescently lit rooms of the basement over which takes longer to master, the Schrodinger equation or the labyrinth. As the physics students play their never ending game of verbal chess, a game in which everyone achieves check-mate at one time or another but no one seems to win, no one seems to question their ability to master the Schrodinger equation, the labyrinth or any other curveball the universe may see fit to throw at them.
Here in the basement, genius conquers all.
The facade of the science building is of red brick and stone. It is large, stately, and uncomplicated. The building is of simple design. It is a large rectangle with a length to width ratio of 3:2 with the longest side being about the length of a football field. There are four entrances to the building, one for each side of the rectangle. Each entrance begins with a rectangular spreading of stone steps up to a large double width ten foot door. The door at the main entrance of the building is carved mahogany. One of the university's alums from 1890, Robert Tillman, had become a world renowned sculptor and woodcraftsman. He was commissioned by the university to carve the doors in the panel style of the baptistry doors in Florence, Italy but without the same nod to the bible and the catholic faith.
Adams University was, according to the standards of the time, exceedingly liberal and non-religious in its views and aims. The presiding authorities at Adams didn't have any known quarrels with God. In fact, many of them were devoutly religious. However they were convinced that for the United States to continue to be the power it was in the world that science and inquiry were the key. For those who were want to think in such terms, "faith without works is dead" and they certainly believed that the future of their university was dead without deep and comprehensive scientific inquiry.
Tillman was an artist not a scientist. But to his credit and perhaps due to his mother's early lessons in the woods around his childhood home in Maine that gave him a deep and abiding respect for nature, Tillman saw beauty in scientific subjects that no one else could see.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Eight Legged Stroll
It's breaktime and I'm laying on my back with my head propped on my backpack watching a spider crawl around a tall blade of grass. I hate spiders. They're one of the few things that make me wonder about the existence of a God. Yet, out here I have the sense that I am the intruder, not they, and as this particular spider doesn't seem to have me on his wandering agenda I leave it be.
I'm surprised to note how calmly I watch this spider as he maneuvers around the uneven ground and plants that to him must be like skyscrapers. What must he think I am? Or does he think?
The breeze is light and the temperature comfortable in the shade. We've just eaten, my brothers and I, and all of us are lying in a patch of green grass under the sprawling branches of a tree on the edge of the meadow. I think they're asleep.
Normally I would be sleeping too. But not today. The grass is too green to be missed.
I look back at the spider, now crawling over a dirt clod and I think of all the things I've seen this summer with my head so close to the ground for so many hours a day. I think of all the little lives played out on a micro level under foot. How far does a fly travel from its birthplace in its lifetime? Has that spider ever been out of the meadow or outlying trees?
The dragonflies down by the river are irridescent blue and purple, gold and black. I've seen their long wings like rice paper beating the air above a ripple. Do they fly against the wind? Do they sleep?
I look up all of a sudden, remembering that spiders can come from above as well as below. I cringe thinking what it would be like to open your eyes from a nap and see a spider dangling directly above your face. Man, I hate them.
As far as I can tell there are no spiders dangling above me or my brothers. We are safe for now.
I took a Human Anatomy course three years ago. My teacher spoke of the different levels at which the function of the human body plays out: Molecular, Cellular, Tissue, Organ, System, Body (if I remember correctly). Each level can be observed by metaphorically zooming in or out of the body and seeing what's going on at that level of detail. At every level there's almost an infinite amount of detail. And each detail zoomed in on has itself an infinite amount of detail.
It's like the meadow. From a distance you can't discern the blades of grass. The entire meadow looks completely blanketed in green grass, but when you get closer you see it's not as lush as you thought before. There's patches of dirt, tan colored weeds and even rocks. Then you lay down in the meadow and the longer you lay there the more worlds open up to you. There are a billion things going on in that meadow, a trillion lives being played out, albeit simple ones. The basic struggles for survival, for food, for shelter are right there on the meadow floor and you'd never know it. You'd never know it unless you laid very still, maybe while your brothers are sleeping, taking in the detail of a leaf, the feel of the earth, the progress of an eight-legged stroll.
I'm surprised to note how calmly I watch this spider as he maneuvers around the uneven ground and plants that to him must be like skyscrapers. What must he think I am? Or does he think?
The breeze is light and the temperature comfortable in the shade. We've just eaten, my brothers and I, and all of us are lying in a patch of green grass under the sprawling branches of a tree on the edge of the meadow. I think they're asleep.
Normally I would be sleeping too. But not today. The grass is too green to be missed.
I look back at the spider, now crawling over a dirt clod and I think of all the things I've seen this summer with my head so close to the ground for so many hours a day. I think of all the little lives played out on a micro level under foot. How far does a fly travel from its birthplace in its lifetime? Has that spider ever been out of the meadow or outlying trees?
The dragonflies down by the river are irridescent blue and purple, gold and black. I've seen their long wings like rice paper beating the air above a ripple. Do they fly against the wind? Do they sleep?
I look up all of a sudden, remembering that spiders can come from above as well as below. I cringe thinking what it would be like to open your eyes from a nap and see a spider dangling directly above your face. Man, I hate them.
As far as I can tell there are no spiders dangling above me or my brothers. We are safe for now.
I took a Human Anatomy course three years ago. My teacher spoke of the different levels at which the function of the human body plays out: Molecular, Cellular, Tissue, Organ, System, Body (if I remember correctly). Each level can be observed by metaphorically zooming in or out of the body and seeing what's going on at that level of detail. At every level there's almost an infinite amount of detail. And each detail zoomed in on has itself an infinite amount of detail.
It's like the meadow. From a distance you can't discern the blades of grass. The entire meadow looks completely blanketed in green grass, but when you get closer you see it's not as lush as you thought before. There's patches of dirt, tan colored weeds and even rocks. Then you lay down in the meadow and the longer you lay there the more worlds open up to you. There are a billion things going on in that meadow, a trillion lives being played out, albeit simple ones. The basic struggles for survival, for food, for shelter are right there on the meadow floor and you'd never know it. You'd never know it unless you laid very still, maybe while your brothers are sleeping, taking in the detail of a leaf, the feel of the earth, the progress of an eight-legged stroll.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I just keep wondering when I won't be sick, or sad or afraid anymore.
Two days ago I had a sudden onset a-typical migraine. It started with crazy visual distortions that made it so I couldn't focus on my own face in the mirror. Everything was rippling and waving like a lake at dawn when every crest is frosted with light. Slowly my head began to hurt and then after that the nausea started. By this time I was in the doctor's with my husband and they decided to give me three shots to help the pain and the nausea. I jumped when the second needle hit my tush. After the amount of time they believed it would take for me to begin feeling better, I wasn't. So they sent my husband and I to the ER. I threw up outside. In the ER they tested my cognition and coordination again to see just how likely it was that this was a migraine and not a brain tumor. I passed all my tests and they decided to give me more drugs, and if those didn't work, I would then need a CAT scan. They gave me an IV with a cocktail of drugs which included benadryl. It knocked me on my arse. After a while they woke me up and I was feeling better so we went home. I went to bed at 8:30 pm and slept until 9 am the next day. Even after that I still felt groggy from the drugs.
Anyway, that was the latest episode. I'm just always amazed at the random things that happen to me. Two months ago I felt a sharp pain in my chest first thing in the morning. I knew it wasn't my heart because it was on the wrong side and it was more acute when I moved a certain way. Nonetheless, the pain was sharp and I couldn't do anything for a whole day. Over the course of several days the pain went away. Very weird.
I can't wait for the day when I just feel well all the time. I especially can't wait for the day when I no longer have illogical fears over issues of daily life. As of yet, my anxiety is untreated and so I still find myself battling nonsensical issues in my inner psyche. I'm afraid of so many things, even to call the doctor to make an appointment to deal with my anxiety. Catch 22. Oh well.
Sometimes I wonder, if I didn't have all the illnesses, all the physical and the mental ones, if I would really be the kind of person that so many people think I am: someone who is grossly talented and intelligent, and capable of doing anything at all, just so long as I want to. Teachers and friends have thought that about me my whole life but I've never been that person. Never ever.
I may never know what I could be unhampered. It may be that the true test of my existence will be to create beauty hampered and greatness fettered. That is what most of us are doing, isn't it?
Two days ago I had a sudden onset a-typical migraine. It started with crazy visual distortions that made it so I couldn't focus on my own face in the mirror. Everything was rippling and waving like a lake at dawn when every crest is frosted with light. Slowly my head began to hurt and then after that the nausea started. By this time I was in the doctor's with my husband and they decided to give me three shots to help the pain and the nausea. I jumped when the second needle hit my tush. After the amount of time they believed it would take for me to begin feeling better, I wasn't. So they sent my husband and I to the ER. I threw up outside. In the ER they tested my cognition and coordination again to see just how likely it was that this was a migraine and not a brain tumor. I passed all my tests and they decided to give me more drugs, and if those didn't work, I would then need a CAT scan. They gave me an IV with a cocktail of drugs which included benadryl. It knocked me on my arse. After a while they woke me up and I was feeling better so we went home. I went to bed at 8:30 pm and slept until 9 am the next day. Even after that I still felt groggy from the drugs.
Anyway, that was the latest episode. I'm just always amazed at the random things that happen to me. Two months ago I felt a sharp pain in my chest first thing in the morning. I knew it wasn't my heart because it was on the wrong side and it was more acute when I moved a certain way. Nonetheless, the pain was sharp and I couldn't do anything for a whole day. Over the course of several days the pain went away. Very weird.
I can't wait for the day when I just feel well all the time. I especially can't wait for the day when I no longer have illogical fears over issues of daily life. As of yet, my anxiety is untreated and so I still find myself battling nonsensical issues in my inner psyche. I'm afraid of so many things, even to call the doctor to make an appointment to deal with my anxiety. Catch 22. Oh well.
Sometimes I wonder, if I didn't have all the illnesses, all the physical and the mental ones, if I would really be the kind of person that so many people think I am: someone who is grossly talented and intelligent, and capable of doing anything at all, just so long as I want to. Teachers and friends have thought that about me my whole life but I've never been that person. Never ever.
I may never know what I could be unhampered. It may be that the true test of my existence will be to create beauty hampered and greatness fettered. That is what most of us are doing, isn't it?
Monday, September 14, 2009
Haiku, Limerick, and a Spenserian Sonnet
Haiku
Wandering the house
Listening: rain, one fly and
Empty thought. Monday.
Limerick
There once was a girl from the Coast,
Who ate garlicky, chewy old toast
And her friends did decide
Of all breaths they despised
Garlic toast girl's they hated the most.
Spenserian Sonnet
A blackened lantern stands upon the shelf,
Unlit so many years since it once shone,
The single light when deep down died the self,
That sputtered in its darkness far from home.
And here to there the shrinking wick would roam
Midst valleys, mountains, gales and torrents bleak
Ash falling through the lantern's crack on stone,
In hellish worlds of which I'll never speak.
I once knew only windows that would leak
and lives that only knew to fall apart
and ashy lantern light so pale and weak
it hardly could improve upon the dark.
Look here young friends, I stand as at noon day,
The light you hold is darkness, come away.
Wandering the house
Listening: rain, one fly and
Empty thought. Monday.
Limerick
There once was a girl from the Coast,
Who ate garlicky, chewy old toast
And her friends did decide
Of all breaths they despised
Garlic toast girl's they hated the most.
Spenserian Sonnet
A blackened lantern stands upon the shelf,
Unlit so many years since it once shone,
The single light when deep down died the self,
That sputtered in its darkness far from home.
And here to there the shrinking wick would roam
Midst valleys, mountains, gales and torrents bleak
Ash falling through the lantern's crack on stone,
In hellish worlds of which I'll never speak.
I once knew only windows that would leak
and lives that only knew to fall apart
and ashy lantern light so pale and weak
it hardly could improve upon the dark.
Look here young friends, I stand as at noon day,
The light you hold is darkness, come away.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Good Cop, Bad Cop
He was obviously dead. Gaping holes tend to make you feel that way about a person.
I hadn't known him well, nor had I ever wished to, but even still there was something about seeing him lifeless, strewn over a desk that made me wonder if I should have. I felt connected to his death. After all, I had known him.
It was several months ago when I was transferred to the East Precinct that I first met Detective Mulroney. He had a greasy sort of look about him, kinda like he used pig lard instead of gel to smooth his hair down. His eyes were so brown they may as well have been black and he stood with the sort of ponchy posture you'd expect from an overweight bull-terrier.
It took less than no time at all for us to realize that we would never be anything close to donut buddies, and he would spend most of his time trying to make my life a living hell.
I was just a beat cop at the time, and being a recent transfer, the newest, lowest guy on the totem pole. I think Detective Mulroney stayed up nights thinking of ways he could get me to quit, or at least have some sort of involuntary bodily function. He'd been doing this for years to all the greenies and he wasn't about to change things for me, a bright-eyed cop with morals and ideals from a different part of town that may as well have been another world.
It started with high-school-bully-prankster type stuff. One day I came in and opened my locker to find a bloody calf's foot hanging from the hook. There was a note taped to the inside of the door that said, "So glad you mooved here." Other than the mess, I actually thought it was pretty funny and had a huge smile on my face when later I passed Detective Mulroney in the hall. His sinister grin dropped into a snarling grimace. He was so mad he could've pissed himself.
Later, things started to get a little more serious. My wife answered the door one night to find a hooker holding my badge who said, "Sorry hunny. Your husband forgot this in the alley." I spent the next half hour explaining to my wife that I hadn't "lost" my badge, it had been stolen by another cop, and no I'd never met a girl named Pixie in my life, and no her pants didn't make her look fat.
Work itself was hell. All the worst jobs were given to me. If there was a dirty job to be done, I was the one that got it. A boring job? Mine also. A pointless job? Right again.
Detective Mulroney was nothing but a huge greasy smile after a few weeks. He was going to break me. His sick form of happiness depended on my misery, but it was really too bad because he was the fool.
What Detective Mulroney didn't know is that he couldn't break me. It's hard to re-break a bone in the same place it's been broken once before, and healed over. His was a futile cause. I was always a little stronger than he was meaner.
I hadn't known him well, nor had I ever wished to, but even still there was something about seeing him lifeless, strewn over a desk that made me wonder if I should have. I felt connected to his death. After all, I had known him.
It was several months ago when I was transferred to the East Precinct that I first met Detective Mulroney. He had a greasy sort of look about him, kinda like he used pig lard instead of gel to smooth his hair down. His eyes were so brown they may as well have been black and he stood with the sort of ponchy posture you'd expect from an overweight bull-terrier.
It took less than no time at all for us to realize that we would never be anything close to donut buddies, and he would spend most of his time trying to make my life a living hell.
I was just a beat cop at the time, and being a recent transfer, the newest, lowest guy on the totem pole. I think Detective Mulroney stayed up nights thinking of ways he could get me to quit, or at least have some sort of involuntary bodily function. He'd been doing this for years to all the greenies and he wasn't about to change things for me, a bright-eyed cop with morals and ideals from a different part of town that may as well have been another world.
It started with high-school-bully-prankster type stuff. One day I came in and opened my locker to find a bloody calf's foot hanging from the hook. There was a note taped to the inside of the door that said, "So glad you mooved here." Other than the mess, I actually thought it was pretty funny and had a huge smile on my face when later I passed Detective Mulroney in the hall. His sinister grin dropped into a snarling grimace. He was so mad he could've pissed himself.
Later, things started to get a little more serious. My wife answered the door one night to find a hooker holding my badge who said, "Sorry hunny. Your husband forgot this in the alley." I spent the next half hour explaining to my wife that I hadn't "lost" my badge, it had been stolen by another cop, and no I'd never met a girl named Pixie in my life, and no her pants didn't make her look fat.
Work itself was hell. All the worst jobs were given to me. If there was a dirty job to be done, I was the one that got it. A boring job? Mine also. A pointless job? Right again.
Detective Mulroney was nothing but a huge greasy smile after a few weeks. He was going to break me. His sick form of happiness depended on my misery, but it was really too bad because he was the fool.
What Detective Mulroney didn't know is that he couldn't break me. It's hard to re-break a bone in the same place it's been broken once before, and healed over. His was a futile cause. I was always a little stronger than he was meaner.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Of One Thing Only Am I Queen
I've always loved going to the Dentist. Even as a child I had a great love for clean teeth and brushed my teeth often and well. I remember going to our family dentist, also a close family friend, and loving every second of my teeth cleaning. That slick-tooth feeling you get after having your teeth cleaned was as good as getting a lollipop. Maybe better.
I know, I was a strange kid. I'm sure now that the only reason I was able to enjoy the dentist office so much was because of all that icky fluoride I was asked to bite down on, over and over. That was the only part I hated. There was something about biting down on gummy-filled foam that never tasted like what they said it would taste like that made me want to gag and puke. In hindsight, I'm grateful.
You see, I've never had a cavity in all my 27 years of life. Not a single, tiny one. What's more, and this has nothing to do with fluoride, I never even had braces or a retainer. My teeth are naturally straight, adequately spaced, and though I have a small mouth, there's almost nothing wrong with anything in it.
Also, and I hear this is very strange, I don't even have a single wisdom tooth in my jawbone. They're just not there.
So there you have it. No cavities, no wisdom teeth, no braces or retainers. I'm the freak of nature every mother hopes she'll have.
At this point I'm just waiting to see how long my streak will last. I keep wondering every time I go to the dentist, "Is this the time they'll find a cavity? Is my reign as queen of tooth perfection coming to an end?" But as always, I come out with a perfect score.
Going to the dentist for me is a bit like going to a major awards ceremony. I am lauded and praised and wowed over as if I'd floated in the door from some dental nirvana. Often the dental hygienist or dentist are so amazed by my clean mouth and track record that they have to call someone else in the room and tell them about it.
"Did you know she's never had a cavity?"
"What? No!"
"And she never had braces either!"
"You're kidding me! Her teeth are as straight as a ruler!"
And so on.
The dentist's office is the one place I can go where everything in the world is going right with me. The rest of my life may be in tatters, job hopeless, relationships strained, body sagging, but at the dentist I am perfection itself, the paragon of dental triumph, and everybody's best friend.
Now if you'll excuse me. It's time for me to go polish all my perfectly enameled trophies.
I know, I was a strange kid. I'm sure now that the only reason I was able to enjoy the dentist office so much was because of all that icky fluoride I was asked to bite down on, over and over. That was the only part I hated. There was something about biting down on gummy-filled foam that never tasted like what they said it would taste like that made me want to gag and puke. In hindsight, I'm grateful.
You see, I've never had a cavity in all my 27 years of life. Not a single, tiny one. What's more, and this has nothing to do with fluoride, I never even had braces or a retainer. My teeth are naturally straight, adequately spaced, and though I have a small mouth, there's almost nothing wrong with anything in it.
Also, and I hear this is very strange, I don't even have a single wisdom tooth in my jawbone. They're just not there.
So there you have it. No cavities, no wisdom teeth, no braces or retainers. I'm the freak of nature every mother hopes she'll have.
At this point I'm just waiting to see how long my streak will last. I keep wondering every time I go to the dentist, "Is this the time they'll find a cavity? Is my reign as queen of tooth perfection coming to an end?" But as always, I come out with a perfect score.
Going to the dentist for me is a bit like going to a major awards ceremony. I am lauded and praised and wowed over as if I'd floated in the door from some dental nirvana. Often the dental hygienist or dentist are so amazed by my clean mouth and track record that they have to call someone else in the room and tell them about it.
"Did you know she's never had a cavity?"
"What? No!"
"And she never had braces either!"
"You're kidding me! Her teeth are as straight as a ruler!"
And so on.
The dentist's office is the one place I can go where everything in the world is going right with me. The rest of my life may be in tatters, job hopeless, relationships strained, body sagging, but at the dentist I am perfection itself, the paragon of dental triumph, and everybody's best friend.
Now if you'll excuse me. It's time for me to go polish all my perfectly enameled trophies.
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