I am willing to bet that, based on the title, you have no clue where this blog is headed.
Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start……..
It is cool fall day in Gaithersburg, MD, and our hero (who remains unnamed at this point) goes about his daily job, working to satisfy his boss and feed his family, making sure that he will be paid yet another week. A rather light (fat-free, I should add) lunch does not do much to quell the hunger pangs, and as afternoon turns into the evening, he is forced to go down to the fourth floor vending machines to look for something to fill the stomach. There are lots of things in the machines – sandwiches, drinks, yogurts, cookies, chips, snack bars, etc.., and then there are the Milk Duds. For the blissfully ignorant ones, milk duds are these small balls of caramel surrounded by chocolate, quite chewy and gooey. Sixty cents are inserted into the machine and out comes a box of Hersey’s Milk Duds.
As the first Milk Dud is popped into the mouth and chewed upon, our hero (still unnamed) realizes that he is chewing on some things that are hard, things that do not belong in a packet of Milk Duds. Did he get a bad box of Duds? Who knows how long the stuff has been in the machine? Frantically, he sticks his finger in his mouth to figure out what is going on. The stuff that he is pulling out of his mouth is surrounded by caramel and cannot be identified. It appears to be white and in multiple sizes. Is this time for a lawsuit? Back to the 6th floor office he goes and as he sits down at his desk, he realizes that there is a hole in his mouth where a tooth once existed. What is coming out of the mouth are pieces of tooth and filling! What has happened??!! A careful examination with the tongue confirms that a tooth that had chipped a couple of years ago (at Disney World in Florida, but that is another story), has gone into the next phase of its destruction.
A frantic call is made to the dentist. An Indian female voice answers the phone – we have no appointments before January 2005. But Madam, I am a patient of the doctor, and my tooth is breaking up. OK, you can come in tomorrow!
So here I am (Oops, the secret is out!), a week later, on a Saturday morning, typing this e-mail with a face half numb – I think I got too much Novocaine, I cannot feel my left ear. I think I gave the wrong answer when the dentist asked if I felt any tingling in my lips. I was thinking tongue when he said lips. (That should teach me to listen more carefully.) The extra dose was quite effective.
My appointment at the dentist’s office was at 8:15 am, to grind down the rest of the broken tooth and put on a temporary crown. When you are down on the dentist’s chair staring up at the bright light, and unable to say anything because you have stuff stuck in your mouth, and still able to think clearly because you do not feel pain, your mind is again free to wander. As I see smoke come out of my mouth, and I get the smell of something burning, I wonder what the heck I am doing here. How can I have that much confidence in the doctor to allow him to mess around with the insides of my mouth?
Anyway, I made it without pain through the experience and am back home safely. Police officer – “Why are you drooling”……
It is wet outside on this Saturday morning. I will probably go outside later to fertilize the lawn. I will try to find time to run tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be better.
Until next time..
Splattered Brains 