Fear of Dentistry

Happy no more.  I called the dentist yesterday.  They can get me in today.  I haven't felt well since.  I don't want to go to the dentist, but I have to.  I am a big baby when it comes to these things.  It's the pain, the inconvenience, and the money.  I go in a couple of hours.  I'm already beginning to tremble.  I don't like my dentist.  I should have called another, but I am a creature of habit.  I don't like change anymore than anyone else.  Maybe less.  But I'm beset by it on all sides.  Oh for those Valhalla days of elementary school and the womb of those years.  

I think of elementary school this time of year.  It was the most exciting time as we decorated the classroom every month for the changing season.  There was Halloween, of course, and for weeks we would all talk about costumes and candy and spooks, ghosts, and goblins.  It was getting dark earlier each day, and at dusk, we might see them in the shadows if we were lucky enough to be out.  Somehow, though, they all disappeared in November and the colors of the classroom went from orange and black to orange and brown.  Turkeys and pumpkins and nuts of all kinds.  We looked forward to pies and getting together with relatives, but mostly football and the annual Thanksgiving Day game between the Lions and the Packers.  But then, it was our favorite season and orange was replaced by a dark, deep red.  Now the days were really short and sometimes, after dinner, the family would go out to look in the department stores for possible things Santa might bring.  And there he was, the man himself, children lining up to sit on his knee.  It was a little odd, of course.  No kid really wanted to sit in his lap, but you didn't want to take any chances.  At night, there were the Christmas specials on t.v.--Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and of course A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I wrote that for me, just to calm my nerves.  Shit, piss, fuck, goddamn--I have to get ready for dentistry.  And tomorrow I am determined to get both my Covid and flu shots, so I will be on the couch most of the weekend.  

Oh how I wish I had someone to ask me if I wanted anything, someone who would bring me grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of homemade tomato soup.  I look around me and every dumbass shithead has some pretty girl.  It makes no sense to me, really.  Why isn't someone knocking on my door some night telling me she really wants to go out with me?  

Yea. . . I know. . . I know.  

But I would light the oil lamps and make nice dishes and pour good wine and play the best music to be heard, and they could be enamored with me and fall in love.  And they could assuage my fears and calm my nervous soul.  

But they like shitheads instead.  

Whatever.  I still have the rest of it.  

Man, these kids can swing.