I have Two Cavities to get Fixed on Monday

Yesterday I slept through my radio alarm and instead I woke up to the phone ringing. The call was to inform me that I was late for my Dentist’s appointment and that I would have to reschedule. I felt quite dreadful. I don’t know why this happens to me, but whatever I do, no matter how subtle or honest I am I always end up looking like I’m out of it, clumsy, and indolent. I am no slacker believe me. I am usually earlier than on time, but for some reason these mishaps curiously always happen at the worst times.

I usually have trouble telling others what I do with my days because to them reading and writing and all the small things I do to keep on learning is not anything that helps me forward, so I’ve got nothing to answer and I look so worthless. And I am trying to get a job even though it feels oh so awful, but really it only looks like I’m slacking, doing my best to avoid employment and continue to leech off of others. I absolutely despise leeching! I probably look like I’m justifying my sluggishness with pathetic excuses right now… Well this is complicated!

Needless to get into a spiral of justifying justifications, because, though I had missed my appointment, I ran to the dentist

anyways and was able to get an appointment one hour later. This took me up a spiral of relief actually. In the dentist’s chair my dentist kept asking me questions: Did you miss class to come here? Are you in college? Why aren’t you in college anymore? Do you work? It’s funny the way dentists ask you a bunch of questions even though you clearly can’t talk with their hands in your mouth. When I could slip a word in the conversation I did my best not to sound idle. I was honest with her, told her I was not sure what to do yet but that school was not the place for me. I told her I had no room to be creative in the literature program. I was amazed. Instead of judging me like I thought a dentist might she admitted to have been the queen of indecisiveness after high school. She had ambitions and she never followed through with them, yet there she was, quite a content dentist. She asked me, and not in a pejorative manner, “So your like an artist at heart?” It made me smile and attempt to nod as she flossed my teeth.

I found I could work around her questions, with genuine honesty, and manage to express myself and be understood. Although I was at the dentist’s, a place that is so esthetically far away from who I truly am, I felt like myself (I still don’t know what that is though), I felt comfortable.


(Pictures from Public Record Office Victoria and Ontario Archives)