August 13, 2001
Mid-August fall is its own season. Through the heat today there was something autumnal in the air. You could be convinced that the phenomenon of the American summer, so neatly folded between Memorial and Labor Day, was coming to an early close.
A visit to the dentist. I’m in the chair waiting for numbness after the needle, looking out of the window at the premonition of fall and listening to the dialogue of an old black and white movie on the recently installed TV, which I can’t see from my seat. Do voices still sound like that? I think not. Have voices changed or did the sound recording then make them sound creamier, layered, like cake?
The dentist has disappeared, his assistant had come in to tell him that a patient was in the waiting room with an emergency.
“She wants you to take out all her teeth.”
“Is she in pain,” he asks.
“No, but she’s crying.”
Coming from the waiting room is the persistent howl of a woman, a cry that rises and falls but refuses to wane. This, coupled with the strangely racy dialogue of the old movie, is creating a ball of hysterical laughter that rises through me. The dentist returns to tell me that the woman, who is 93, may be demented but she knows exactly what she wants: She wants her teeth out. His assistant joins him and the task of reupholstering my rotten teeth begins. He drills, she holds the suction pipe, I try to make accommodating spaces for their instruments. There is an element of mirth in the room not usually associated with dental procedures. By now the woman has gone, she will return tomorrow to have her teeth extracted. The three of us gathered around the drill can barely contain our embarrassed glee: the terrible weeping has ceased, we are not 93, we are not having our teeth pulled.
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Mid-August fall is its own season. Through the heat today there was something autumnal in the air. You could be convinced that the phenomenon of the American summer, so neatly folded between Memorial and Labor Day, was coming to an early close.
A visit to the dentist. I’m in the chair waiting for numbness after the needle, looking out of the window at the premonition of fall and listening to the dialogue of an old black and white movie on the recently installed TV, which I can’t see from my seat. Do voices still sound like that? I think not. Have voices changed or did the sound recording then make them sound creamier, layered, like cake?
The dentist has disappeared, his assistant had come in to tell him that a patient was in the waiting room with an emergency.
“She wants you to take out all her teeth.”
“Is she in pain,” he asks.
“No, but she’s crying.”
Coming from the waiting room is the persistent howl of a woman, a cry that rises and falls but refuses to wane. This, coupled with the strangely racy dialogue of the old movie, is creating a ball of hysterical laughter that rises through me. The dentist returns to tell me that the woman, who is 93, may be demented but she knows exactly what she wants: She wants her teeth out. His assistant joins him and the task of reupholstering my rotten teeth begins. He drills, she holds the suction pipe, I try to make accommodating spaces for their instruments. There is an element of mirth in the room not usually associated with dental procedures. By now the woman has gone, she will return tomorrow to have her teeth extracted. The three of us gathered around the drill can barely contain our embarrassed glee: the terrible weeping has ceased, we are not 93, we are not having our teeth pulled.
- rachael 8-14-2001 2:09 am