The HSR is WARNING YOU—TO NOT TASTE THAT SUSPICIOUS PORRIDGE
BUBBLING IN THAT STIRRING BLACK CAULDRON, because your “sweet, innocent,
angelic, and uncontaminated” smile doesn’t need to go through that unnecessary
and painful metamorphic transformation!
Today started out as any other ordinary day in the neighborhood
dental clinic: some of the morning employees would sign in and meet at the coffee
machine for some water cooler talk, while others put away their personal
belongings in their lockers before starting work.
Soon, we started seating the first patients gathered in the
waiting room and processed them for treatment.
Everything seemed to proceed along normally with my first
patient, whom I have never treated before. He was a regular-looking six-year-old
boy, but with bright, almost-see-through-me eyes.
After exchanging a respectful “Hello,” he sat in the chair and
dutifully opened wide, offering no resistance.
He needed a baby tooth out in the bottom front area of the
mouth, the first one to be lost.
Upon examination, the tooth, which was just an old, short
remnant of its former self, could bend far over with a finger touch, but it
just would not come out at home. That’s what brought them here. After
documenting consent, I placed the usual numbing jelly in the area and around
the tooth.
Everything so far went according to plan. After exchanging
short words with the caregiver, I prepared myself, forceps in hand, to take out
this primary tooth that had caused so many disruptions in their lives.
I could tell that the elderly woman wasn’t the child’s
mother. There was something quite unusual about these two, adult and child, but
I just couldn’t figure out what it was right then. However, it didn’t warrant any changes in the
treatment.
I reached carefully into the mouth with the extraction
forceps, taking no chance that it wouldn’t come out on the first try. I decided
to hold on and will this tooth out.
I held the tooth within the forceps, and squeezed the
forceps’ handles together, ever so slightly and…
You’ll never guess what happened next…
The baby tooth flew from the mouth area with great speed, so
fast that I lost track of its trajectory. I sensed, however, that it went in
the direction of the foot end of the dental chair.
Now don’t get me wrong, but I take out baby teeth all the
time with no problems. I always recover the tooth, well, except for this one time
right here.
I made a valiant attempt to find it, giving a close examination
to the floor, and looking among the folds of the chair cover.
In the end, I apologized for losing track of it, and
promised to set it aside in the event that I find it in the future.
The caregiver, who also had intensely piercing eyes, profusely
thanked me for removing it, but she stood up and pointedly warned me, “Please
don’t go looking for that thing! The world needs to be rid of it! His mouth is
no longer burdened anymore by its secrets. If you even start to go looking for
it, you may be forced to make some very hard decisions about your life…soon.”
“That stub of a tooth possesses unmentionable forces that
must not be touched by those proven powerful, but only by a plain, uninitiated man,
to unlock its unstoppable power. If you go searching for it, you will be
suddenly swept into a new world. You will come back totally changed, if you
come back at all! Yours will be a journey unparalleled!”
I perked, "Whoa!" and gave one more quick glance at the floor.
When I turned my head back around to see them again to say bye,
they had silently disappeared!...
…Poof!...
Just like in the scary movies!
Well, it was almost break time, so I started to get up and
leave the treatment room, but something told me to give a quick look back under
the side of the chair one more time.
I then bent over to see under the foot end of the chair one
last time. And when I did…I saw some thing…
It was twinkling and shiny. I reached out my hand to touch
it…and…
Then I felt the room spinning around me!
It felt like I was fainting…or being pulled into something!
That’s when many pretty colors started swirling around me…
I should have obeyed the warning words of that woman, “Don’t
do it, or you will be swept away!”
Now, I must pay dearly for my curious meddling!...
TO BE CONTINUED…
May you have many…I do want my vivid dreams to transport me
to amazing and far-away places, but I also want to come back and wake up on time!...if
my doctor orders medicine for me, I want it to be chocolate bars and
smoothies!...only disturb the matter of the matrix if you are ready and willing
to face the resulting unpredictable backsplashes!…smiles!
