Snakes and Crowns

 I went to the dentist for the first time in over six months and sat in the chair with some trepidation. Of course the technician wanted x-rays, and I took a long hard think before allowing her to go ahead, even explaining the moment of silence as "trying to think of a reason why not, but I couldn't."

After that propitious beginning, I stared ahead at the world map in front of me, the now-familiar cities of Ukraine directly before my face. I made another ill-considered stab at conversing by mentioning how much I now know about that country. The hygienist raised an eyebrow over her mask and said she didn't watch the news, then lowered the chair back so I could stare up at the TV mounted to the ceiling. 

The dentist's TV was playing Natural Geographic-style videos of animals in far lands. While being poked, prodded and scraped for tartar removal, the screen above me showed a desert vista, where a knot of snakes pursued an ungainly lizard across the sand. Lizards aren't normally sympathetic-looking creatures, but I cheered for that lizard to evade the horrid group of snakes and had to turn my head away when the poor guy lost his battle and got squeezed to death. (The hygienist quickly turned my head back to where she wanted it.)

Adding insult to injury, the dentist came in at the end to inform me that I have a crack in a molar, surrounding the old filling and pushing through to the outside. He asked me if I was feeling lucky, then said I could make it a long while without needing a fix or my tooth could crack tomorrow, in which case a crown might not save it. I wasn't feeling lucky, so put off making a decision about the crown.

I did encounter my good friend at the dentist, and later celebrated her fiftieth birthday with other friends at a celebratory dinner. It was lovely to be out, even as a new wave of COVID creeps into Colorado, even as my own daughter sent me a picture of her positive test result. Today I head to Boulder to take her some groceries and to take our son to the orthopedic doctor who will hopefully tell us how to repair the torn ACL. Still not feeling lucky - guess I will postpone the crown decision for yet another day.