Why teeth are the new boobs.

These are, in my opinion, life’s most difficult tasks:

- Making “Barista” sound like a dignified career

- Proving that you’re mature enough to get married, and yes, Mom and Dad and Slew of Older Siblings, I know that marriage will not “make me happy” or solve all my problems.

- Realizing that marriage does not make you happy or solve all your problems.

- finding a dentist like the one from your childhood.

The dentist I went to from ages 4 to 18 was so nice.  He always told me I was a “good helper!” when I opened wide.  He used novocaine to “put the cavity bugs to sleep.” He had 8 different rolls of stickers to choose from at the end of my visit.

Now, I hate all dentists.  They floss rubber dams into my teeth and they laugh when I say novocaine makes my heart race.  And at the beginning of every visit, no matter how many times I’ve seen them before, they ask, “do you want your front teeth fixed?”

I chipped my first adult tooth pretty much the moment it came in.  And in the good old decades of the 80’s and 90’s society wasn’t so obsessed with WHITE! STRAIGHT! TEETH!  But now every dentist asks me if I want my front tooth fixed almost before he says hello.

And I always say no, because I want to limit the number of ways in which I am Not Good Enough.  I think teeth have become the new boobs.  There’s a “right” size, shape, and color that everyone wants but very few people have.  And I like my chipped front tooth.  It’s the mark of my childhood playfulness.

So I saw my fourth Seattle dentist, and my least favorite of them all, today.  He is a good-old-boy “Doctor Knows Best” kind of dentist.  I had to constantly interrupt him to ask what he was doing or talking about, like, which tooth is “Number 5″ is and what’s wrong with it?  Or, why am I being scheduled for another appointment?

But my insurance is ending this month and I didn’t have time to find a new dentist, and I had three cavities to fill, and he was going to fit me with a new night-guard to stop me from grinding my teeth at night.

So I went to my hopefully last appointment with this dentist.  He numbs me up (ignoring my whimpers) and before I know it, he’s scraping my chipped front tooth!  So I interrupt him, AGAIN, and ask if that’s the one with the cavity.

“No,” he replies,”but I need your front teeth to be even for the nightguard to stay in place.  I’m going to fill the one with the chip in it.”

“Oh!” I said, “I didn’t know that.  I’m not sure if I want that.”

“Why wouldn’t you want it?” he asked, perplexed.  Then, with a mocking sneer, “It’s not like I’m taking away your personality.”

I sat for half a minute and weighed the options while he looked at me skeptically: Night-guard, or familiar front teeth?  But the real internal debate was much more familiar:  Honesty, or Acquiescence?  I so rarely err on the side of speaking up for myself, especially not when a middle-aged “professional” man is looming over me.

In my haze, I decided that the night-guard was important, and I let him “fix” my teeth.  But I was sad that I wasn’t courageous and outspoken.  I’m always sad about that.

My front teeth now look like they’re from a magazine.  They are so STRAIGHT! and EVEN!, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I feel like I’ve lost something.  It helps that Jack can’t tell the difference, and probably no one can.  But I feel like I’m walking around with over-sized celebrity teeth, the kind that people make fun of for being *too* white and straight.  Like the dazzlingly perfect scar of my compromise.

Voice

Last week I finished a women’s self-defense class.  It was only four sessions, but I did learn a lot.  Mostly I learned that by making it to my mid twenties and marrying a non-abusive person, I’ve won most of the battle.  Chances of me being assaulted now are very very small.

(Side note, it’s not being married that reduces the chance of assault, but being wise about relationships, knowing the signs of abuse and power-control, and able to listen to your instincts.  Just to be clear!)

Also, I re-learned the power of my voice.  That phrase makes me cringe, but I can’t think of a better one so I’m using it.  In the class, we spent a lot of time making eye contact with each other (which, in the Western world means, “I am so not kidding”), and yelling good strong words like, “No!” “Stop!” and “Let go!”

After yelling my first couple “NO”s, I realized how very unnatural it is.  My instinct is to resolve things quietly, to not draw attention.  The one time in my life I remember being grabbed (in Russia, in a park at night, by a drunk soldier, by the wrist.  Sorry, Mom), I gasped, yanked my hand back (he couldn’t hold my thick coat sleeve), and walked away quickly.  Didn’t yell.  Didn’t run.  How foolish and lucky I was!

I’ve had blessedly few occasions to need to yell in my life.  My mom has had more.  Recently over the dinner table, she was giving her “the bus is good enough for a mother” speech (did anyone else watch Bye Bye Birdie as a kid?).  Which led into a story about the wierdos on the Metro buses at night.  Which I’m sure was not told to make us feel guilty about making Mommy take the bus while we get her car for 10 months of the year.

So, my mom was on the bus to the airport (which I think is the route no Metro driver wants), and it was semi-crowded.  There was a man who seemed chipper and talkative, until a woman in a burqa sat down.  Then he started badgering her, asking if she knew there was a war going on, talking about her “shifty eyes.”  My mom saw that the woman was trembling and apparently trying to shrink.  She told the man to stop.

He responded with something like, “You don’t get it, you’re just an old white woman.”

And MY MOM, in all her upper-class liberal glory said, “Sir, this is not about race, this is about human beings respecting each other!  This woman has every right to ride the bus without being harassed by you!”

Then the whole bus applauded.

I was so proud.  Because I know my mom struggles with fear just like me, possibly even more.  I know that it’s hard to think about someone else’s safety when you’re so obsessed with your own.  If I were on that bus, I might have convinced myself that the woman in a burqa wasn’t threatened (it was a public bus afterall, during rush hour), and I needn’t do anything.

But my mom used her voice for a woman who had none.  Just like our money, our skills, and our time, I think God gave us our voices so we can give them away.

http://www.strategicliving.org/

Blogger’s Guilt

Whenever I think about my blog now, I panic.  What should I write about?  What if it’s less interesting than the last thing I wrote about?  Will this be added to a long list of things I start but don’t finish (and where is the “finish” line anyway)?

Then I think, “Wow, Chris, you started a blog.  Welcome to 1998.”  Maybe for my next post I’ll compare CD’s to cassette tapes (“but you can’t cue a CD in the middle of a song!”).  Or I can review cordless telephones.

I definitely don’t need to panic, because many people have flaked out on their blogs before me.  As evidenced by these Google search terms:

“Blogger’s Guilt” = 704 results (now 705?)

“Blogger’s Block” = 52,500 results (so that’s what it’s called!)

“It’s been a while since I updated” = 31,400 (not bad for a whole sentence.  Also, the most boring way to start an update)

“Nothing much has happened” = 56,000 (even more than “Blogger’s Block!”)

“Hello, Internet!” = 59,500

“I am the world’s shittiest blogger” = 1

Associations

Here is a sentence that I have now memorized, thanks to our 10-day visit to Jack’s Nana and Grandpa:

“Bless us O Lord, for these thy gifts which we were about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

For 55 years, all the Canty kids (and later, grandkids) waited for Grandpa to give this blessing before dinner.  And every time we visit Nana and Grandpa, Jack wonders how his life would have been different if he had grown up sitting at that table and saying that prayer.

The short back story: Jack was born in Manchester, MA, and lived there for the first few months of his life.  His parents divorced when he was still a baby.  His mom raised him, and Jack met his dad (and grandparents) at age 23.

Jack imagines he would have ended up like the guys who came to his non-Christian Bible Study in college.  The ones who were raised Catholic seemed to have neutral (or bad) associations with church and religion.  Like our  10-year-old cousin who, when asked if he wanted to go to church, responded, “Will there be donuts?”  Donuts make an okay god until about age 12.

Not that I expect a 10-year-old to ask, “Will the burden of failure and shame be taken from me?  Will the vague emptiness in me somehow be filled?  Will I be known and accepted?”  Especially not a 10-year-old who tells Helen Keller jokes without knowing who Helen Keller is.

Once I came across a blog written by a Catholic dad.  He had two young kids (under age 4), and he wrote that he makes a point of holding and cuddling his kids during mass.  He said that he wants them to grow up associating church (and, I assume, God), with warmth, love, and safety.

When I read that I thought about the Canty family, thanking God for his blessings every night for 55 years; and all that the Canty kids associate with that prayer: anticipation of Nana’s cooking, a sense of shared activity, parents and grandparents being proud (as they all were when 4-year-old Jillian crossed herself correctly), and mostly, family stability.  No matter what fights went on that day, you could count on sitting with your family and saying that prayer in the evening.

If you care to comment, what do you remember about your religious upbringing say, before age 5 (before you learned the Bible stories and started to evaluate what was true and what wasn’t)?  What feelings do remember having about church and God?  In what ways did that shape you as an adult?  Do you think any of those associations are still with you?

I started going to church around age 5, after a wedding.  The minister called for prayer and when everyone bowed their heads I said, “MOM, WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?”  Mom decided it was time to start my religious education.  I’m curious, though, what did I miss before then?