An Evil Dentist and John Fogerty

See, I'm not dead.

Hello and welcome to another edition of Rob Dow's World. Merry X-Men (thanks Wade) to everybody and stuff.

Yeah, I know this is the longest stretch I've gone without posting since I started this thing, but this is my blog and I'll post whenever I damn well feel like it!

Besides, I'm not getting paid for this... yet.

I spent the past week working (except for Christmas, of course) for the BLM and the week before that laying on the couch watching movies and bad shows on TV. But I wasn't on the couch because I'm lazy. I am lazy, but that's not the reason I was on the couch. The reason I was on the couch was because the right side of my head felt like someone was bashing it repeatedly with the flat side of an iron. While turned on. The iron, not me.

By now, you must be thinking, "Gee Rob, that's terrible. Why on Earth did the side of your head feel that way?"

Well, let me give you a little hint:




See, it all started out innocently enough. I had two wisdom teeth pulled a couple years ago, and Cathy and I figured I should get the other two removed before the end of the year when our dental insurance renews. I called to schedule an appointment and they said they could fit me in that afternoon. The dentist, or should I say the evil Dr. Vincent Vu looked at my teeth and proclaimed that a non-wisdom tooth must also come out, but he can fit me in the next morning. Eighteen hours later, the guy's yanking teeth out of my head.

I had expected the teeth to come out, I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly and painlessly painfully. I swear, this guy enjoys making people hurt. First of all, he didn't give me enough local anesthetic, and second, he didn't give me any nitrous at all. I would have said something, but by the time I realized what was happening, I had this big rubber thing wedged in the left side of my mouth, and all I could do was make pitiful grunting noises.

The first tooth came out easily enough, but apparently he didn't like that. He figured the next one should come out in pieces. Not in one big, easy chunk, but in several small fragments which would necessitate his picking and poking and prodding in the hole in my mouth that used to hold the tooth. All told, he spent about ten minutes on those two teeth, but it seemed like an eternity.

Oh yeah, did I mention there were three teeth coming out?

Well apparently Dr. Vu decided he was really going to outdo himself on the last one. Apparently, he had nothing else to do for the next hour but work on that last tooth. Now when I say work on that one tooth, I don't mean carefully, gently, and gingerly slide it out of its socket. No I mean tug, drill, yank, pry, poke, dig, pull, twist, bend, and jerk that tooth out of my mouth. The guy was using my lower jaw as a fulcrum to try to get leverage, pinching my lip in the process. I swear, he broke a sweat trying to get that thing out. My tooth was giving him a workout!

He kept asking his assistant for different tools, but the two of them had some sort of dentistry code, so I couldn't tell what he was asking for. No, I'd just have to wait and be surprised and find out when it was in my mouth. Hmmm, I think he's using pliers. That one sounds like a drill. This one must be a tire iron. At one point, some lady came in and said his 10:00 appointment was there, but he was still busy working on the little tooth that couldn't. I could feel my other teeth rubbing against each other where I would normally floss if I flossed because my whole jaw was flexing back and forth like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Finally, I heard a "crack." He said, "There we go," and started removing fragments. Eventually it was all over. Dr. Demento left and I asked the assistant if they had the teeth so I could see them, and she said they didn't. They kept my teeth and didn't even leave a quarter under my pillow! The 10:00 lady probably stole them.

So I spent the next week on the couch. I tried to post something on the blog, but the pain pills weren't helping (strangely enough), and I wasn't too thrilled about sitting upright for any semi-lengthy period of time. Next thing I knew, a week had gone by and it was time to go back to work.

Incidentally, today at work I realized that Centerfield by John Fogerty is the worst song ever. I mean, clapping in a song is bad enough, but synthesized clapping is unexcusable. John Fogerty wrote some good songs in CCR, so I don't know what his problem was in the eighties. Oh yeah, it was the eighties.

Plus, the song is about baseball. Playing baseball is amusing, but watching it is tedious at best. Listening to someone else sing about baseball is about as exciting as watching paint dry. Eggshell white paint. Three coats.

Yes, these are the things I think about while working at the BLM. It's a really nice change of pace from tutoring because I can let my mind wander instead of having to concentrate. But alas, it's almost over for now, and soon I'll be back to tutoring and schooling and senatoring and stuff. But at least I'll have weekends off. And I won't have to be there at 7:00 AM like I do tomorrow. Actually, I'm kinda looking forward to it.

On that note, I think I'll wrap things up. We're going to Idaho to see the families soon (I'm not going to say which days we'll be gone in case tweakers are reading this and want to break in and steal our scrap metal), so it may be a while (again) before the next posting. If you don't like that then you write a column and I'll post it (unless it makes me look bad, of course).

See y'all next year!

Rob