make it happen

Long Haired Hippie

On the Peace Corps front, I recieved a large envelope last week in the mail. Instantly my heart skipped a beat. Was this it already? Was I to recieve my FORMAL INVITATION this soon? I had just submitted my medical clearance forms. This was supposed to take weeks, months even. It was EXACTLY what my fellow PCVs told me would arrive. A large envelope from the PC. How could this NOT be it?? I rushed to open it. Practically ripping the entire thing in half in order to get to the contents only to find that it was my dental forms returned to me with a note stating that I needed my dentist to write a letter stating that my wisdom teeth were/are sucessfully extracted. That date is set for September 23. All 4 teeth... out. The dentis at the IU Hospital, aka dentist in training asked me if i wanted sedation or a shot to numb the pain while i consciously sit through the procedure. I think back to Heather Ault. I took Heather to get her wisdom teeth removed when I was in college. What i experienced there was something I'll never ever ever forget. It belonged in a Halloween haunted mansion, or a torture chamber training center. It was an older dentist, a guy who should have been out of practice YEARS ago. I think he furnished his office with junk he had picked up from the Salvation Army when he opened in 1964. That square, 'modern' furnature. Wall decorations that looked like they would have made better gliders than art work. Greens and tans galore. She screamed. Screamed like I've never heard anyone scream before. Over and over and over and over. 20 minutes passed. 30. 40. Screaming and screaming. Sounds of someone in pain, someone who needed help. Oh, he tried to consold her. "we've almost got it" "It's almost out" "Just sit back" "Suck it up, you pansy!!" OK, so that last part I made up, but seriously I sat there, helpless, listening to it all. Finally I had to just leave. Go for a walk and pray that she was alrigth. 2 hours. That's how long he worked on a tooth that was wrapped around her jaw. In the end, she was bruised and swolen. She lost the feeling and taste in half of her tongue due to nerve damage she sustained. Come to find out this guy had SEVERAL law suits against him for mal-practice. So the dentist asked me. Sedation or a shot in the jaw. "Take it out with a ball pin hammer, whichever is cheaper." I told him... Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but at the core of me, I'm still a tightwad. On a lighter note, Mark Cain (my roommate) and I went on a run last night and some redneck in a pickup yelled at us "Long Haired Hippie"!! I havent cut my hair in 9 months and to get that shouted at me... how dare him! Actually, it made my WEEK! So, I'm an ironworker now. An apprentice actually. Putting up Tilt Wall panels in Marion, IN. The job should last for acouple of months. It's interesting. I'm amazed at 2 things: that the F word is used in many many more ways than I thought was possible for it to be used. Second, there are many things that they left out in Sex Ed in 5th grade that these guys are more than happy to share. The sad part is, I wonder how many of them have ever truly loved a woman... not that I have, I just wonder. That's all.

posted by Brian R Dunn @ 6:15 AM