Crown Meditation, Part II

Since Kei, whose blog I've been secretly reading off and on for years, humbled me with a comment, I thought maybe I should increase my posting from roughly once a month to never to maybe twice a month to never. I'm fearful of this new goal, but let us soldier on.

Also, I realized that my so-called crown meditation was ambitiously divided into parts. I don't know if I need to point out the odd phenomenon of retaining often the most useless and even wrong information from one's otherwise pedagogically pointless junior high education--for example, while my extracurricular lessons in how to instinctively identify the one type of girl who always has Midol and a whole arsenal of menstrual accessories on her, always happy to dole out even if your asking represents the only time you speak to her (O, cruel food chain of junior high!) and how to smoke paid off, I don't recall learning anything in, say, Speech class, but somehow I do remember Mrs. Hatton's claim that her knowledge of public speaking was so vast that she could have even taught MLK a thing or two that would have improved his delivery of "I Have a Dream." Another of those things I recall from the glassy-eyed vegetable state of 8th (or was it 9th?) grade Language Arts was that if you're making an outline, you HAVE to have at least two parts--TWO PARTS! TWO! DO NOT LET THE PASSING OF THOSE NINE MONTHS HAVE BEEN FOR NAUGHT!!!1!1!--to whatever sub-division you're making or you shouldn't divide it at all. Which brings us to the slapdash second half of this entry, purely for the sake of the rules.

First, Kei reminded me of an interesting thing I've encountered in the latter half of my tooth odyssey: being the dental office VIP. I'm not sure if this is her experience as the daughter of a dental assistant, but as a patient who began her expensive mouth renovation right before the U.S. economy's nosedive gave us the ambience, but not the inspiring moxie, of "The Journey of Natty Gann," I can't say I know of any place where my soft as butter, brittle as ice teeth and I are as popular as the dentist's. Also, because all the other bindle bums apparently have bread lines to stand in, I seem to be one of their only patients, meaning I have finally succeeded in achieving celebrity solely through sheer lack of other people. Anyway, what this all translates to is a strange tendency on the part of the dental assistants to want to talk to me when my mouth has either become a diorama-like display of dental instruments or is so numbed with Novocain that trying to apply Chapstick to my lips holds the same infuriating sensory disconnect as trying to grab toys in one of those godforsaken arcade drop-claw games.

On a recent visit, my usual assistant, who I like very much, was wondering what she should be for Halloween. Having heard her predicament in wanting to be some variety of adorable but not slutty mummy when the vast majority of pre-made female costumes are slutty but not adorable, I tried to come up with a certain kind of gurgle that would sound non-committal, reassuring and not tied to recognizable words that would only create more confusion if she felt she had to determine what exactly I was trying to say--a balancing act further complicated by having to hold back a more honest knee-jerk gurgle/snort of criticism at the very idea of a mummy being anything but a mish-mash of crusty bandages, fugitive eyeballs, flaking-off bits of dried-up mummyface, and, for the more pseudo-historically minded, something to do with sinister ancient Egyptian curses. This back and forth of the pros and cons of adult costume wear and my accompanying vague murmurings of agreement, mutual disapproval or, secretly, germane soliloquies on the difficulties we women face in purchasing an easy yet undemeaning costume in this consumeristic patriarchy of ours (which sort of sounded like "nnnhguaaahrl") went on for several minutes, leading me to later wonder a) why I felt I needed to reassure anyone who was about to poke the holy hell out of me* brand new Joe Biden teeth and b) how many perfectly acceptable conversations you could have like this and what it says about the art of small talk. I guess they already covered this on the Simpsons where Homer gets his mouth wired shut, but it's an interesting and sort of unpalatable experience to have all your perceived conversational skill, allusion-making ability and pop cultural acumen removed and to find yourself an even more desirable listener. Which is probably yet another reason I'm so popular over there! Love you guys!

Anyway, the teeth and I are all set for a new round of wacky adventures as we get set to move to Chicago tomorrow. Will we be the original odd couple? I don't even know what that means, but I sure hope not!

* the only possessive pronoun I feel has any place preceding mention of me* new teeth, as opposed to my old ones, is "me," rather than "my," because that's how I'm certain they managed the distinction in pirate times.