When you were a kid, did you ever have that day in school when someone (who was it–a dentist? the school nurse? I can’t remember) would demonstrate proper brushing techniques? Afterwards, you would get a toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, maybe some floss, and the most important thing–the thing you really wanted!–those red beads which you were supposed to swish around in your mouth and they would show you by staining your teeth pink or not whether you were doing a good job brushing.

Well, apparently on these days my mind was never on observing proper brushing techniques. It was all about getting my hands on those beads and seeing whether my teeth would be pink or not. I can even remember how they tasted–sort of chalky, sort of sweet, sort of like candy cigarettes.

Those were carefree days, weren’t they? Back when all you had to worry about was whether your loose tooth would fall out on its own or have to be yanked out by a string (heaven-for-fucking-bid!).

Not so today, my friends.

If you have stopped by to visit me before, you may already know what I am about to reveal: My name is Myfanwy Collins and I am an aggressive brusher–meaning I brush my teeth often and I brush them hard.

So what, right? I mean, we all want clean teeth–so what’s so bad about being an aggressive brusher?

What’s so bad is that you can wear away the enamel on your teeth and you can put yourself at risk for gum recession. And the latter is exactly what I did.

For the past four years, I’ve had dentists tell me that I need to go to a periodontist to take a look at the eensy gum recession. If I didn’t get it taken care of, eventually I might be in danger of losing my teeth and–this was left unsaid, but I went there anyway–become a toothless old crone. Or worse, I might not only lose the teeth but lose bone and then not even be able to get fake teeth put in.

Okay. So I was terrified and put off seeing the periodontist until I could put it off no more. In December I went for my first visit, at which I was told that I was in “excellent periodontal shape” (but for the recession) and the procedure was explained to me.

What they would do: clean away excess skin around my recession, clean the teeth in the same area, scrape at some of the surrounding skin to get a blood supply (grafts need to be fed by blood or they will not take), then they would move to the roof of my mouth–my palette–and cut away a piece of flesh for the graft. With the graft in place, they would then make several stitches and then cover up both wounds with a putty-like dressing. All of this would be done in the office with novacaine. In one week the stitches would come out.

I was told that the pain would be minor, that I would be able to eat what I wanted, and that I would have to lay off exercise for a few days.

I queried about what would happen if the graft didn’t take. I queried about flesh eating bacteria. (He answered the first question, ignored the second).

I found out how much it would cost (a lot!) and how much insurance would cover (enough!).

I made my appointment.

Easy-peesy.

So, two days ago, Monday, I went in for my procedure. I felt relatively calm. It had been built up in my mind for so long as something I didn’t want to do that now that the time was at hand, I was already sort of relieved.

My periodontists are a father/son team. The father is semi-retired and does the initial visit and the son does the surgery and follow-up. They are nice, which is good because I sort of insist that you be kind if you are going to have your hands in my mouth for any period of time.

The son, as I said, was performing my surgery. He and his assistant got me prepped with some numbing gel and several (probably 10+ when all was said and done) of novacaine. In the background, the radio played a mixture of oldies and pop. This music pleased the son as he prepared me for the surgery. He did a combination whisper-sing/whistle as he worked.

Just as he was ready to make his first incision, Aretha Franklin came on the radio. Respect. Yeah. Son liked this! The whisper-sing/whistle intensified.

Then he had my lower lip in his hands. He was pinching the lip for nearly a minute as he prepared for the incision (not quite sure why) and as the song heated up, so did the singing, the whistling. And then he started unconsciously dancing my lip along with the music.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T (my lip going up on one side and then the other. Whistle-whisper-singing). Find out what it means to me (lip. lip. whistle. lip. lip. sing.)

And did I mention that this is perhaps the whitest man on the planet? Well, he is.

So this goes on and I am fighting to contain myself because laughing at this juncture as the man is about to cut me, would not be good.

Okay. So the moment passes and on with the surgery. It takes less than an hour and I feel no pain. When he is done he asks me if I want to see, a question second in absurdity to the nurse practioner (after I told her I sometimes faint during pap smears) who asked me at my yearly if I wanted to insert the speculum myself because I might find it “empowering.”

Hell no! You do not let someone like me (neurotic, prone to hypochondria) see something like flesh newly stitched onto her gums. You just don’t. Did I mention that I’m a big baby?

Afterwards, the putty-dressing is placed on my wounds and I am sent on my way with instructions.

Did I mention that I have never had stitches before? This is only my second surgery ever. The first one was when I was 2 1/2 to correct a lazy eye (Jesus, I sound like a fucking mess, don’t I?). No stitches required there. Only a patch that I had to wear afterwards and then Voila! No more crossed eye.

Okay. So I have five stitches and this in and of itself is not a bother but that a few of them are looped around the back of my teeth and I can’t stop fiddling with them with my tongue. That’s me. I’m a fiddler.

The other option for fiddling was the dressing on top and in front. As the day wore on (and before Allen went and got my codeine prescription filled), I honed in on the top dressing and pressed and played with it. It was driving me crazy because it felt like a piece of gum stuck to the roof of my mouth and it tasted like a bandaid (thought the doctor assured me it was not toxic).

It will come as no surprise that the top dressing came off before I went to sleep that night and it was sweet relief when it did. And now this morning, the front dressing has come off and my mouth (other than the stitches and the graft) is starting to feel normal again.

So let this be a lesson to you, aggressive brushing is not a good way to go! Get yourself a Braun Oral-B (I got mine at Target for $20) and use that instead of your hard bristle toothbrush, lest you find yourself with a piece of flesh stitched onto your gums.

A couple of items of note on a soggy Tuesday:

*Please go check out Jordan Rosenfeld’s interview over at Too Beautiful (while there, you might want to check out the archive of the What Are You Working On series so far)

*Ghoti issue #5 is live and features the work of some of my pals: Randall Brown, Tiff Holland, Michelle Garren Flye and many others. Go on and read it!

One of my friends, an avid reader and lover of the short story, was asked recently what his top favorite collections are–Through the Safety Net by Charles Baxter was on that list and it is no mystery why, as it is a gorgeous, poignant, and wonderful collection of stories that test boundaries of what is expected by the reader.

The only other Charles Baxter I have read is the novel The Feast of Love, which now feels to me like an expansion of the lovely final story of the collection, “A Late Sunday Afternoon by the Huron”–which is seemingly a random collection of observances about people gathered by the Huron on a Sunday afternoon.

But as you read on, you understand it is a pointillist story–these dots are gathered together to create a whole picture (even though the narrator sometimes interjects with such things as, “What a relief it is, sometimes, not to have to tell a story about these people”).

After reading this collection, I will now also seek out Saul and Patsy because I loved these two characters and their quietly beautiful story, “Saul and Patsy Are Getting Comfortable in Michigan.”

What you find at the heart of this collection is compassion–a writer’s compassion for his characters, his empathy. And so as I read, I felt in tune with this compassion, no matter how broken some of the characters might seem, it was that broken part that drew me in, that made me feel–and what I felt was something close to being in love.

Behold! The tree that took out our power yesterday. As you may (or may not) know, pine trees have shallow roots and so when you heavy rain, followed by heavy wind (and snow), you are in danger of having fallen trees. And this tree fell and took the wires with it. It also spanned the width of the street so that those of us with no other outlet were trapped like rats. (Actually, by the time I took this photo it was after 3PM and the power guys were there with their chain saw cutting it up and getting ready to put up a temporary pole and transformer).

But we are lucky because we had fire.

And port!

And Allen Dean’s beloved Aladdin Lamp, which makes me nervous because I’m always fearful it will tip over and the fuel will spill and the house will catch fire. But I have to say that if you live somewhere rural and cold where long power outages are a potential, then these make a good investment.

But it has a wonderful glow to read by and gives off heat as well.

We are actually pretty well set up to take care of ourselves in these situations, excpet that I had no bottled water (only distilled water, which tastes like ass, and seltzer) and not enough batteries (and maybe a generator wouldn’t be such a bad idea). So that is my Sunday. And today it was just as cold, but sunny and the tree is gone and the wires all up and you’d hardly know that anything happened.

Of course, I’ve lived without power and water before, certainly for a lot longer than twelve hours, but I never thought much more than about how inconvenient it was for me at the time. We live in a different world now, though. And so I thought of the contrast between our situation and the earthquake survivors in Pakistan, many without proper shelter and clothing in the frigid temperatures. And I thought of New Orleans and how relief was so slow to come, whereas our relief was relatively quick. To be without, even for a bit, makes you think.

If we’re going to keep seeing each other this way, there’s probably something you should know about me. I have, according to my best friend, this syndrome in which I do something making it difficult, if not impossible to go back to certain places. The “something” I do is not always the same thing, but it whatever it is, it means that I’ve either done something so embarrassing (like make a detour so that I could pass by the guy I had a crush on, only to learn that I had chocolate smeared on the ass of my shorts from driving around in the hot car eating a candy bar), shameful (walk by another crush at a different time–it might actully have been the same crush–only to learn that my skirt was tucked up into my underwear), or strident (see below) that re-entry is an impossibility.

Today I walked out on an appointment. I can never go back.

Backstory: I grew up in a family business. A restaurant. I started working there doing odd jobs when I was 11. Customers, then, were a part of my life whether I liked it or not. And one of the things I learned is that no the customer isn’t always right but you need to make the customer think he is always right (unless he insults your mother in front of you–then he is wrong. Very, very wrong. So wrong that he will be kicked out before he pays his bill). Another important lesson was to not keep people waiting. And if they were waiting you checked up on them, sold them another drink, kept them happy (kept the drinks strong).

As such, other people’s time is important to me. So important, in fact that I try to always be early for appointment if not right on time (and when I am late I feel so guilty that I could self-flagellate on the spot). And as a person who runs her own business, I take my time very seriously and so if you are a business I am going to you had goddamned well better not keep me waiting–not if you are a dentist (oh, that creepy dentist Dr. Tony kept me sitting in the chair for an hour once. Did I let him have it), not if you are a doctor, not if you are a vet, and not even if you are a hair stylist and my hair is in desperate need of a trim.

That’s right. Today, I had a hair appointment at 1:45. An odd time, I thought, and so I even called before I left the house to confirm. I was told yes, 1:45. I arrived right on the nose at 1:45 and was told to wait and that the person would be right with me.

1:45. 1:50. 1:55. 2:00. 2:05. 2:10.

me: “Hi. I’ve been waiting for a while… “

receptionist: “They’re running behind today. All day.”

me: “Oh really? I called before I left home.”

receptionist: “She should be right with you.”

me (walking over to coat rack to get my coat): “I think I’m just going to leave.”

receptionist: “Do you want to reschedule?”

me: “Nope.” And I’m out the door and in my car. As I’m backing out, I see the receptionist running across the parking lot waving her arms at me.

I roll down my window.

receptionist: “She’s ready for you now.”

me: “I’m just going to go.”

receptionist: “Do you want to reschedule.”

me: “Nope.”

Okay. So 25 minutes doesn’t seem like an awfully long time to wait for most people and I feel a tiny bit precious over the whole thing. Honestly, though, if they had been more forthcoming about the whole thing, let me know that I’d have a bit of a wait, check in with me, and have something other than Men’s Health and an In Style from December in their waiting room, I would have been okay. The problem was the lack of communication and the lack of remorse. Now they have an extra hour in which they have no customer and I have ugly hair. But that’s okay. I have done my penance: I bought myself some Altoids sour apple chewing gum at the grocery store and now the inside of my mouth is bleeding (!!!).

And so now, as I sit here with my bangs in my eyes, you know the ugly truth about me and the issue of re-entry.

Mark Pritchard at Too Beautiful has started a fun new feature in which he interviews writers and editors about their current projects. It’s called what are you working on. Go on and read it.

I was blown away by these photos: National Wildlife Federation–winners of the magazine’s 35th annual photography competition

riley dog — a site I visit daily for inspiration.

And today, for your reading pleasure, I offer you this wonderful story: Like the Girl on the Cereal Box, by Cathie Byers Hamilton

&

The new issue of The Barcelona Review is now live–so go on and read it: Issue #51

Listen to Bat Segundo #18 is Chris Elliot (which I am really excited about because Chris Elliot makes me laugh):

Subjects Discussed: Lack of sleep from both parties, the lure of money, the Chris Elliott persona vs. the real Chris Elliott, Jack the Ripper, parodies, Alan Moore’s From Hell, research, trying to read while acting, on being declared an idiot, Get a Life, on whether the Chris Elliott persona gets tiresome, Carrot Top, cross-dressing, atmospheres with disparate historical artifacts, Cabin Boy and Tim Burton, support groups, Jack Finney’s Time and Again, Yoko Ono, Theodore Roosevelt, typewriters, how Bob Elliott became involved with Daddy’s Boy, mangled language, the editing process at Miramax Books, Paul McCartney, the Paul Guinan-Boilerplate controversy, nepotism, illustrations, infantile humor, the other side of Chris Elliott, Robin Williams, comic archetypes vs. acting, and the biggest piece of advice given to Elliott by David Letterman.

Made by Miss Snark in response to a question about using 37¢ stamps w/ 2¢ stamps instead of using 39¢ stamps:

Stamps are not shoes.

FONTS are shoes.

So is double spacing, printing on one side of the page and correct margins.

Stamps however are like your underpants. I don’t care what they are as long as you’ve got them ON.

We don’t really know when Darby’s birthday is, but four years ago today we brought him home from an animal rescue and so consider this to be his day. So please join me (and indulge me) in wishing Darby a happy birthday!