Good morning, readers of a gentle nature. It's Thursday, which means we're only one day away from the next Follow Up Friday. Can you feel the excitement? Try again. How 'bout now? No, that's just a mild headache. Oh well, it'll get there eventually.
Last weekend, my wife and I were going to hang out with our friends Lisa and Paul. We asked our friends Greg and Ceil if they could join us. Greg's response really caught me off guard: "I'm not sure if we'll be able to make it or not, because Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery." To be honest, I'd never even asked myself if chinchillas had teeth. I asked Greg for more information because I was a little confused. As it turns out, they do have teeth, and like beavers, the teeth keep growing unless they're given something to help grind them down. In this case, Ceil will be feeding her pet some hay to dissuade the teeth from further growth.
From one day to the next, I never know what I'm going to encounter in the way of conversations with my friends. However, "Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery" never crossed my mind as a possibility. They ended up joining us that night, so I'm sure it wasn't just an elaborate lie to get out of seeing us. Hearing that baffling non-excuse made me think of two other times in my past that I've heard unexpected things regarding teeth.
As a kid, it was clear early on that I'd need braces. I had pretty sizeable front teeth and a massive overbite that needed some professional attention. My brother Kevin had started seeing an orthodontist/oral surgeon named Dr. Taylor, so my parents sent me in there for a consultation. I went in there and quickly sized the doc up as a bit of a bull in a china shop. That's not a good thing when your teeth are the china, by the way. He had me open up and then proceeded to look around in my mouth. Without a word to me, he put down his instruments and walked away from my chair. I heard him open the door to the waiting area and say very loudly to the full room, "Mrs. Klein, your son's teeth are a wreck!" That's one.
Since my teeth were a wreck, I needed some work done to facilitate the renovation process. Namely, he was going to pull four of my baby teeth to create more room in that poorly-formed structure I called a mouth. The timing was horrible, because I was about to star as the titular role in my first grade play, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." I needed to be able to spit out such lines as, "Stop it, stop it, I can't stand it! All the beagle worshipping is just too much for me! I can't stand it, I can't stand it, I CAN'T STAND IT!" without tripping over my newly-exposed gums. As an actor, my voice was my instrument, and I was trusting my potentially lucrative future career to a man with the social graces of Sloth from The Goonies.
The day came, and I sat down in the chair. Dr. Taylor approached, and I tried reassuring myself that he probably wouldn't still be practicing dentistry if he had accidentally killed anyone. I laid back and followed their instructions as they started to administer the gas. Suddenly, I was in a large, dark room. I heard someone coming for the door, so I ran to the corner onto a big bed with dozens of stuffed animals on it. Hiding amongst them, I peered out and saw Dr. Taylor looking around the room. (In hindsight, my subconscious totally stole this scene from E.T., but it sure felt real and original at the time.) He called out for me, but I tried staying as motionless as possible so I could be mistaken for one of the animals. He barked out some commands like, "Look over here," and "turn this way," but I just kept as still as I could. He was getting closer and closer, and as I contemplated making a run for it, I was awakened by one of the dental assistants. "Everything went very well," she told me. I started to relax and think, "Hey that wasn't so bad," but then she continued her sentence: "Although Dr. Taylor decided to extract 7 teeth instead of 4 while he was in there." And that's two, my friends.
Like all masters of the craft, I pulled myself together to give the crowd a performance for the ages. I told Snoopy to "just get down off the doghouse and eat" with more Charlie Brown-ness than Charles Schultz ever dreamed of. Sure, I lisped throughout most of it, but maybe that was just a choice I made as an actor for my depiction of the famed prematurely-bald child. Despite my obstacles, my performance was still way more believable than blonde bombshell Shannon Kelly playing a beagle. An impartial panel of my parents, my Cabbage Patch Kid, and Hulk Hogan all gave me the highest marks possible on my performance, so I feel pretty good about it.
Anyway, Greg's bizarre comment about Ceil's chinchilla's never-ending teeth led me back my brief time in the care of Dr. Taylor. I switched to another orthodontist when the time came to get braces, and he had a significantly better bedside manner. More importantly, he was always able to accurately predict his procedures, so I never ended up with three braces on the same tooth or anything. I'm proud to say that my teeth are no longer a wreck, and I didn't even have to eat hay to achieve that.
Last weekend, my wife and I were going to hang out with our friends Lisa and Paul. We asked our friends Greg and Ceil if they could join us. Greg's response really caught me off guard: "I'm not sure if we'll be able to make it or not, because Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery." To be honest, I'd never even asked myself if chinchillas had teeth. I asked Greg for more information because I was a little confused. As it turns out, they do have teeth, and like beavers, the teeth keep growing unless they're given something to help grind them down. In this case, Ceil will be feeding her pet some hay to dissuade the teeth from further growth.
From one day to the next, I never know what I'm going to encounter in the way of conversations with my friends. However, "Ceil's chinchilla just had dental surgery" never crossed my mind as a possibility. They ended up joining us that night, so I'm sure it wasn't just an elaborate lie to get out of seeing us. Hearing that baffling non-excuse made me think of two other times in my past that I've heard unexpected things regarding teeth.
As a kid, it was clear early on that I'd need braces. I had pretty sizeable front teeth and a massive overbite that needed some professional attention. My brother Kevin had started seeing an orthodontist/oral surgeon named Dr. Taylor, so my parents sent me in there for a consultation. I went in there and quickly sized the doc up as a bit of a bull in a china shop. That's not a good thing when your teeth are the china, by the way. He had me open up and then proceeded to look around in my mouth. Without a word to me, he put down his instruments and walked away from my chair. I heard him open the door to the waiting area and say very loudly to the full room, "Mrs. Klein, your son's teeth are a wreck!" That's one.
Since my teeth were a wreck, I needed some work done to facilitate the renovation process. Namely, he was going to pull four of my baby teeth to create more room in that poorly-formed structure I called a mouth. The timing was horrible, because I was about to star as the titular role in my first grade play, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." I needed to be able to spit out such lines as, "Stop it, stop it, I can't stand it! All the beagle worshipping is just too much for me! I can't stand it, I can't stand it, I CAN'T STAND IT!" without tripping over my newly-exposed gums. As an actor, my voice was my instrument, and I was trusting my potentially lucrative future career to a man with the social graces of Sloth from The Goonies.
The day came, and I sat down in the chair. Dr. Taylor approached, and I tried reassuring myself that he probably wouldn't still be practicing dentistry if he had accidentally killed anyone. I laid back and followed their instructions as they started to administer the gas. Suddenly, I was in a large, dark room. I heard someone coming for the door, so I ran to the corner onto a big bed with dozens of stuffed animals on it. Hiding amongst them, I peered out and saw Dr. Taylor looking around the room. (In hindsight, my subconscious totally stole this scene from E.T., but it sure felt real and original at the time.) He called out for me, but I tried staying as motionless as possible so I could be mistaken for one of the animals. He barked out some commands like, "Look over here," and "turn this way," but I just kept as still as I could. He was getting closer and closer, and as I contemplated making a run for it, I was awakened by one of the dental assistants. "Everything went very well," she told me. I started to relax and think, "Hey that wasn't so bad," but then she continued her sentence: "Although Dr. Taylor decided to extract 7 teeth instead of 4 while he was in there." And that's two, my friends.
Like all masters of the craft, I pulled myself together to give the crowd a performance for the ages. I told Snoopy to "just get down off the doghouse and eat" with more Charlie Brown-ness than Charles Schultz ever dreamed of. Sure, I lisped throughout most of it, but maybe that was just a choice I made as an actor for my depiction of the famed prematurely-bald child. Despite my obstacles, my performance was still way more believable than blonde bombshell Shannon Kelly playing a beagle. An impartial panel of my parents, my Cabbage Patch Kid, and Hulk Hogan all gave me the highest marks possible on my performance, so I feel pretty good about it.
Anyway, Greg's bizarre comment about Ceil's chinchilla's never-ending teeth led me back my brief time in the care of Dr. Taylor. I switched to another orthodontist when the time came to get braces, and he had a significantly better bedside manner. More importantly, he was always able to accurately predict his procedures, so I never ended up with three braces on the same tooth or anything. I'm proud to say that my teeth are no longer a wreck, and I didn't even have to eat hay to achieve that.
Have a good day, folks. I'll be back tomorrow with a FUF. There's endless space still available, so please write in at ptklein@gmail.com with any thoughts, questions, or observations.
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