Blue Tooth

I got a root canal. The tooth on the back lower right part of my jaw couldn't handle it anymore. The nerve was too big to stay exposed like it has been and it had been through a lot in a matter of weeks. Two dentists tried to put it back together before dentist #2 yanked out a sliver of broken tooth and said it was hopeless.  It was time. I had been unreasonable with the foods I'd asked the tooth to chew for a long time. The Welsh I think first I cracked the enamel years ago biting on an olive pit, but the final irreparable split of the tooth's walls came from a piece of breakfast sausage containing a mean and nasty fennel seed. CarrRACKK!

Tomorrow I'll visit my dentist to make my weekly payment for her work and inform her that the right side of my jaw hasn't taken well to all the recent attention. I am worried about any more bad news (really hoping to put off the crown work). Everything had been going great until last week's appointment to fill the root canal. I could not physically sit still and deal with any more mouth trauma. I tried to get it under control, breathe deep and think myself a ut eventually she finished with, "I did as good as I could with you moving." I told her I understood.

If this were Facebook, I could post that Ray Is Chewing Up A Bowl Of Popcorn With The Left Side Of His Mouth. 

She's gonna love seeing me.

Why Wouldn't We say...

"Have you ever heard people say that they are worried about figuring things out because then they'll die?"

"I've heard you say it."

"Seriously?"

"You say it all the time - "

"No, I mean seriously I'm the only one? Because I hear a lot of people saying it. (pause) Men mostly. Maybe its a guy thing."

"Everything ends in death with boys."

"No, no. I think when you hear someone say, "I'm figuring it out", they have pulled themselves from their usual strand of living towards a new approach, a new idea. Some of these new ideas can completely shift a person from their axis and by doing so, give them a new life. As the new life starts to take hold, the old struggle, or the old life, disappears.  This can be very frightening for people my age who feel like they are figuring things out."

"Your age?"

"Forget I said that. The point is, when a revelation of that which is happening around you comes, you feel yourself in that same moment one step closer to nothing. Someone might take these feelings for the sensation of being near death - "

Traci has the keys that get us through the door of our apartment.

"- and that sensation could make people afraid to see things in a new light. Afraid enough to remain with the things they know. Because knowledge, my love, is destructive of many things we aren't sure we don't need."

She opens the freezer door. The sound of ice in a glass.   

"Bourbon?"

"Yes. Please."