Show Me Your Teeth

It was Saturday, and we had been driving home from the bowling alley, me sitting in the back between my sister and my boyfriend, my parents up front.  The game had been one of intense competition, though not as intense as the Catch Phrase games we play tend to be, and to replenish ourselves we had stopped at the grocery store for some snackage, including individual candies from the large plastic bins - saltwater taffy, root beer barrels, and gummy orange slices.  I had resisted the call of Gouda and had opted instead for Cocoa Crunchies cereal.

We had been merrily stuffing our faces when my dad yelled “Son of a bitch!” as he was pulling up to a stop light, giving us all whiplash with his swift braking. We were startled.  “What?”  He fished around in his mouth, pulling out the half-chewed remains of a gummy orange slice, along with a crown. “God damn it!”

Gummy fruits: dangerously delicious.

The following Sunday night, which tends to be family dinner night, we had all made our sandwiches and were sitting down at the dining table, which had been temporarily turned into my dad’s handyman work bench.  He had been fixing my mother’s CD player, and while he removed the various tools and the scattered segments of the electronic device, he left one lone yogurt container in the middle of the table.  I figured it was filled with the wares of a fix-it-man - extra screws or something - but when my sister asked about the contents, my dad informed us that it was, indeed, the crown that had been taken down by the orange slice the night before.

Having that dental malfunction sitting on the dining room table while she was eating dinner didn’t sit well with my sister. “Ugh, ew! Can you get it off? Just get it off!” She wriggled in her chair.

“WHAT,” said my dad. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It just freaks me out, I start thinking about the dentist . . . I hate the dentist!”

“FINE,” grumbled my dad, getting up and relocating the offending yogurt container. “Jesus Christ.”  I told him he should leave it under his pillow so the tooth fairy would give him a shiny new nickel, but he wasn’t too keen on the idea.

My sister couldn’t stop thinking about the dentist and teeth, however, and about how freaked out she was at the thought of her own teeth randomly falling out.

“Look at these pieces of corn,” I said, spooning up some soup, “don’t they look like little teeth?”

“Don’t!” she said. “I don’t want to think about the dentist. I HATE THE DENTIST.”

“Remember that guy who smelled like chicken salad?” I asked.


“I thought it was tuna,” said my mom.



“Chicken salad or tuna salad, either one,” I said.  “And he got really close to you, and you could smell it.”  My sister agreed, recalling her own uncomfortable, stinky experiences.  He had retired not long after we started seeing him, fortunately, but then we were exposed to the horrors of the new dentist and his teeth-rating, which set my sister off all over again.

“Well,” said my dad, “That dentist actually retired, too. There’s a new dentist, I just went there.  He’s young and good-looking.  He did a good job on me.”

My sister instantly perked up. “What, did you tell him you had two ugly daughters you needed to marry off?” my sister asked.

“NO,” he said. “He had a girlfriend anyway.  I saw a picture of them together.  And she called him.”

“What, he just took his calls while he was working on you?” said my sister.

“No, I was there for a long time.  I would have had to go back four different times, but they made the crowns there,” said my dad.  “So I heard him on a break, or something.”  I didn’t ask why my dad was eavesdropping on the new, hot young dentist’s hot young phone calls but instead wondered aloud if she was a dentist as well, and how they met.

“I wonder if they listen to ‘Teeth,’” said my sister, referring to the Lady Gaga song, and then she asked my mother if she would take her and hold her hand in the examination room the next time she went to the dentist, because she was scared. My mother promised that she would, as she has a kind heart and will go along with a lot of fuckery as long as it makes us feel better, and my dad started talking about the miracles of dentistry, and how convenient it was now.  My sister then asked why they couldn’t just put something in your mouth and zap the cavities away, but then my dad said that it was easier to take precautions and prevent them in the first place.

“Oh, so it’s like herpes,” said my sister.  “Once you get them, you’re screwed.”

The Majestic Blazer of 90's Glory

This is what I pulled out of my closet to wear last night. Rescued from a rack at the local thrift store for no more than $1.50, it is a fabulous bright pink and purple blazer with an obnoxious, yet inviting floral print, circa late 80's or early 90's. Doesn't it just make your shoulders quiver with delight in anticipation of the shoulder pads?

Well, I cut those out, and gave them to my sister so she could stuff her bra with them.

It's not as sparkly as I'd like my 90's blazers to be, the type of sequin-heavy thing that makes it feel like New Year's Eve 1990 EVERY DAY.  But last night, it spoke to me.  Thus, I freed it from its hanger, and shoved my arms into it.

It was going to be a good night. I could feel it in my phantom shoulder pads.

Indeed, it was a magical night. The man I go around with and I got to the bar with 10 minutes until happy hour was over and karaoke began. Despite our fast indulgence in cheap happy hour drinks, neither of us sang, though we pondered what songs we could bring to the table - could we achieve the high-pitched chorus of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy"? Could we slow it down with a "2 Become 1" duet?  Neither of us are karaoke people, and I'm not even a singer, so we got a collective F in participation last night. I've been scarred for life by a music teacher who must have thought that every single person could sing on key and not sound like a cat with rabies, and boy did I show her.  She probably saw me as a monster simply because I have subpar vocal talent, but at least my last name didn't sound like a swear word.

We did enjoy my sister's rendition of a Miley Cyrus song (she too had on a fabulous outfit, sans amputated shoulder pad breast implants). By midnight, many of the songs were just being screamed, though done so with magnificent gusto (the Creed song, in particular), so we went around the corner and visited the dance party. That was where it got messy - slowed down by alcohol but fueled by the beat ("Beat the beat up", my boyfriend said, trying to recall the Pauly D quote), we made our usual half-assed attempt to get jiggy with it.  When I realized I had sweat enough to permeate my fancy blazer, and I had to work in about seven hours, we left and went home, Skee-lo stuck in our heads.

I retired the blazer to the closet this morning - another successful Tuesday night out. Thank you, floral blazer!

My significant other apparently did not have as wonderful of a morning to follow up the great night out. I could tell, because I heard the bottle of aspirin rattling before the bedroom light was turned on at 6:50.  As we were preparing for our day, he walked out into the bedroom, brushing his teeth, then stopped, and turned to me. "What?" I asked.

He paused, then he took the toothbrush out of his mouth, and looked at it.

"This is your toothbrush."

The Last Question

"How do you feel about DIVERSITY?"

I hesitated. An explanation of DIVERSITY had been provided as the first part of the question, and then that bomb was dropped by the personable, even likable, interviewer across the desk.  He looked up at me and waited, probably overcome with anticipation as I formed what was going to be yet another brilliant answer in my interview - an interview that I was slapping silly with my genius. I was doing well, partially because he wasn't being a cold-hearted sea beast like the man who interviewed me half a year ago. That man had spent 60% of the interview looking down, and he had treated the entire charade with the upmost seriousness, as though I was applying to be President of the Moon and not just another forlorn secretary whose main purpose in life was unjamming the goddamn fax machine.

Because this interviewer was so personable, and made eye contact, and because there also wasn't someone else in the room for the sole purpose of taking notes on my fuck-ups, I felt comfortable being myself, that is, the witty and slightly sarcastic person I am, or at least, the witty and slightly sarcastic person I think I am.  I had inadvertently psyched myself up, though I wasn't quite Jack Donaghy looking in the mirror and yelling "NOW GET OUT THERE, YOU MAGNIFICENT SON OF A BITCH!" It was more like that squeaky internal monologue that was telling me they needed me a lot more than I needed them. I had a job already, a full time, albeit fuckery-full job, and they were the ones that needed me to sit in a wee glass box ("cars only hit it occasionally") during my weekend evenings from Thirsty Thursday to Slurring Saturday. Earlier, my internal voice had been trying to extinguish all nervousness: "You don't even care about this. You don't! So don't be nervous.  Brush your teeth again, your breath smells like cheese, you shouldn't have eaten all of that Gouda this morning."

Gee, DIVERSITY? Is that really what it boiled down to?  This was the last question on the official interview list, and it was something so broad and land-mine-y - what was I going to say? I could barely compose the words in my head because at that moment the internal voice was screaming "SHIT SHIT SHIT HE'S LOOKING AT YOU NOW! ANSWER! SAY ANYTHING!"

"Good?" I said, finally.  I'm sure I chuckled a little, ha ha, yes, I can laugh at myself, did you HEAR how lame that was?


I paused. "I mean . . . I've worked with plenty of people, different ethnicities, different socioeconomic backgrounds . . ."

"OMG REALLY?" yelled my internal voice. "JUST ACT LIKE YOU DON'T EVEN SEE RACE OR POVERTY, you see PEOPLE. DO IT. Oh, God, I think I still smell Gouda."


I should have said something along the lines of how diversity creates different viewpoints and ideas.  And different viewpoints and ideas are essential to innovation and advancement.  That's basically what it's all about - variations - evolution - adaptation.  I could have been science-y and nerdy and created that brilliant metaphor but all I could think of was GOOD. DIVERSITY. GOOD.

"It's good," I concluded.  "I feel like this should be an essay test!"

Fortunately, the kind-hearted interviewer smiled, nodded, scribbled something, and then started in about uniforms.  Whew.  Shirts. There's no conflict or tension there.  We could just have a nice, simple conversation about shirts, and forget about the Freshmen Rhetoric 101 speech on DIVERSITY.

Overall, I did well on the interview, very well, and besides being slightly confused - oh, I'm on the FIRST floor? - right when I stepped out of his office, I felt a sense of elation and accomplishment.  I could have said more about DIVERSITY. I could have composed some feel-good poetry in the name of DIVERSITY, and maybe made a joke about Antoine Dodson being a historical figure of our times, transcending boundaries, just to show how much i knew about DIVERSITY.  Sadly, I didn't ace that question, but then I thought about all of the other
interview fuckery I'd had over my lifetime: "List three words to describe yourself." "Um, watch these VHS tapes about employee safety at the grocery store" - and I felt good. At least I'd pronounced "socioeconomic" correctly.

Then I pretty much got down on my knees and prayed right there, in the middle of the street, oh please Lord, I do not want to interview again for a long, long time. Please, please, let me be President of the Moon.


But I got the job instead.

Who wouldn't want to be President of some fancy, uninhabitable space rock?