It began by chewing a Dorito nacho cheese corn chip. A piece of it went into the hole where the crown on the right-side molar used to be. Biting down caused another small piece of enamel to be chipped out of the bottom of the wrecked tooth. And so, the pain became a focus on the urgent need for some kind of relief. I did not want to replace the crown that had replaced that tooth because none of the three dentists who had worked on it managed to keep a crown on it for more than two or three years. It was more than a thousand dollars every one of the three times. They ignored other tooth problems to replace the work of the crowning dentists. I had a second cracked natural molar that didn’t get worked on until the last time I had the crown replaced before the pandemic. Ironically, that molar lost its one and only crown a couple of weeks ago.
So, not wanting to die of tooth pain, I went to an Epic Dentist who was an Asian lady with a penchant for scolding patients who didn’t care for their teeth well. I listened to her blister the air with orders to two other men who did not properly love their teeth while I was there at the dentist being worked on.
I had lost the molar I was there for during the pandemic, and I lost it for the third and last time. The Epic Dentist agreed that the tooth was destroyed. She also wanted to replace both crownless teeth, by digging them out of my jaw and screwing an implant in both of their places. The cost ranged from $1,700 to $27,000, all of which I could not afford in a lump sum. I thought I had talked her down to the cheapest price and only one molar (the one that was hurting,)
Well, things rarely go the easy way for me. I did pay only $1,777 through a finance deal that allowed me to split it up for 15 months. But she was definitely going to gouge out both molars with a dull instrument. Possibly with a rusty spoon.
She started on the sore tooth. It was, it turns out, seriously infected. And what’s worse, it was stubbornly rooted in my jaw.
“You shouldn’t feel any pain,” she said, “since I anesthetized you with enough numbing juice to make a moose unconscious. You will feel pressure, but not pain. And don’t worry when you hear bone snapping. The procedure is meant to do that.”
Of course, that was a lie. The rusty spoon, the gardening spade, and the jackhammer she used all made crunchy sounds and caused it to feel like she was driving the tool all the way through the bottom of the jaw. That “pressure” certainly felt like PAIN to me.
“Hang in there. You’re fine,” she said every time my back arched and I stifled my scream. “It’s just pressure. However, the root is stubborn and isn’t coming out easily.”
Fifteen minutes and thirty death screams by me led to a break.
Then we went on for another fifteen. I told them every military secret I had ever heard, all none of them. I promised the Devil my soul if it could just be stopped, but he was watching from the corner behind the dental assistant and enjoyed the show too much to stop it. Besides, my soul is only worth 75 cents. The first half of the root finally came out and I was given a recovery break while I trembled like I was going through an earthquake and whimpered like a whipped puppy.
The second half of the root came out easily. Apparently, Satan was satisfied with the three quarters he could get for my soul and absconded with it And I pleaded for another day before tackling molar number two. They gave me two weeks. I was in no shape to endure another Mongolian tooth torture session. So, now, as I sit on my bed at home during a blizzard in North Texas trying desperately to recover on antibiotics and aspirin, I have that one more molar extraction to look forward to (and have nightmares about.)
#3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.
Catch a Falling Star 
Morning Has Broken
Today is off to a miserable start. I heard on the radio that David Bowie has died. Ziggy Stardust… the Goblin King… The Man Who Fell to Earth… the Thin White Duke…is gone. And even though since high school in the 1970’s I have never been quite sure how I felt about his music, I wept. The man was a musical maker of lyrical poetry. He could make you feel really really terrible… but he always made you feel. And he made me depressed as he led me through the Labyrinth… but he also made me soar… on the wings of a barn owl. It was about facing the darkness and finding your way. Finding the way out. Singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, but not actually singing it… making peace on Earth instead. Sometimes things are just so weirdly beautiful it hurts.
I dropped my daughter off at her middle school, and then Jody Dean & the Morning Team played this on the radio.
I wept again. Darkness is my old friend… I have lived with and through depression after depression. My own… my wife’s… my children’s… And it is a miracle I have lived this long without succumbing to the Darkness. It took Robin Williams. It took Ernest Hemingway. But somehow, the Goblin King always goaded me onward, to find the answer at the end of the Labyrinth. “You… you have no power over me.” And then I am okay once again.
I captured the dawn once again this morning. Once again I failed to truly ensnare the subtle reds and pinks and purples that were actually there. But there it is, anyhow. The morning has broken. The blackbird has spoken. The morning is new.
My heart is still sore this morning. The dog didn’t help when she spilled the trash to get at the napkins with bacon grease on them. We may have a dog-skin rug as a doormat later today. But David Bowie left so many words and ideas behind to comfort me. Is he one of those “neon gods we made”? Of course he is. But as the owl flutters off in the closing credits, we can take comfort in the knowledge that no one is ever really gone. And we can always anticipate some… Serious Moonlight.
This is, of course, an old post revisited.
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