Friday, April 30, 2004
“You nervous again?”
“What? Oh. Sorry.”
“No, it’s just that it makes you look really nervous.”
I bite my cheeks. When the teeth think that the mind is away doing other things, they start to bite around the insides of my cheeks, first nervously. In tiny, quick nips. Then, finding the rough lining exposed, they methodically chomp away at the meaningless old cells in an attempt at creating a mouth free of irritating bumps or irregularities.
To free myself from the teeths’ relentless bite, I try to throw other things in there for the pearly whites to surround and attack. Maybe a piece of gum or a plastic pen. Tonight all I could find in my car was a hard-plastic Bic ballpoint. I rattled that thing between my teeth for the whole 45 minute drive home. It must’ve been twenty minutes before I realized that my teeth had been rattling out a cadence, a martial rhythm clacking between molars and incisors. You can’t get much of a rhythm going with gum, and soft plastic pens are reduced to a mangled, chewed-up mess. But what can you do with a hard plastic pen but make it dance and sing for you. The cheeks were glad for the reprieve in the fighting, let me tell you. And my mind was pleasantly surprised to find the teeth making creative use of their discipline situation.
I would have chewed gum if I still had any. Someone opened my car in the middle of the night two nights ago and cleaned it out of almost everything. My favorite sunglasses (they only cost me $5, mind you, but they were really nice glasses), a rooftop canoe carrier kit (still in the box. Another $5 purchase), my two-outlet power-inverter for recharging the laptop while driving (theoretically. It didn’t want to work in Benz, so I forgot to bring it inside), three garage door openers (for my garage, and the doors on my folks’ houses, 45 miles away), and every single piece of paper in the glove box (including tire warrantees, registration, a few maps and a tiny bottle of ibuprofen). He didn’t take my paint-smeared overalls or my insulated Krispy Kreme mug I thought I’d lost. He did take the rest of my gum, though. An nearly empty lighter, some pennies & nickels. Here’s the good news: I usually leave a spare key in the old Benz, just so I can put up the electric windows or run to pick up the kids. But I’d looked for it earlier that night, and mumbled to myself when I’d found that it had made its way back inside. And in the trunk I had my 4 weight and 5 weight flyrods, along with a Lowe lumbar pack filled with flyboxes and fishing stuff. That would have been a haul worth nearly a grand. . .
I could have smoked a Honduran Robusto to keep the teeth busy. It’s about right for the 45 minute drive. But the air is frigid and damp tonight, and I am still fighting a nasal thing that’s been holding an annoying sit-in up in my nose and head for nearly two weeks now. Cigars are not conducive towards good nasal passage health, especially when the windows aren’t cracked to insure the smoke’s quick egress. Anyway, I didn’t have a lighter.
So my teeth clattered away on that pen as I drove too fast down a dark road wet with nearly-frozen drizzle. I imagined what would happen if I’d lost control on a corner and slammed into a ditch. My groaning body would crawl from the steaming wreck, and I would limp toward the road. Headlights peak across the tops of the haggard sage bushes and briefly light up my pallid hands, streaked with black blood. I stagger to the road and collapse just as a Buick’s tires screech across the wet pavement to stop inches from my matted hair. In the hospital the doctors stabilize my wretched frame, and one of the nurses is confused my mumbling: “gone…Bic…rhythm and cheeks…” She ups the dosage on my IV and I fall into a deep sleep. In the morning, my wife wakes up from her uncomfortable position in a straight-backed chair to find me staring out the window. “What are you, nervous?”
“What? Oh. Sorry.”
“No, it’s just that it makes you look really nervous.”
I bite my cheeks. When the teeth think that the mind is away doing other things, they start to bite around the insides of my cheeks, first nervously. In tiny, quick nips. Then, finding the rough lining exposed, they methodically chomp away at the meaningless old cells in an attempt at creating a mouth free of irritating bumps or irregularities.
To free myself from the teeths’ relentless bite, I try to throw other things in there for the pearly whites to surround and attack. Maybe a piece of gum or a plastic pen. Tonight all I could find in my car was a hard-plastic Bic ballpoint. I rattled that thing between my teeth for the whole 45 minute drive home. It must’ve been twenty minutes before I realized that my teeth had been rattling out a cadence, a martial rhythm clacking between molars and incisors. You can’t get much of a rhythm going with gum, and soft plastic pens are reduced to a mangled, chewed-up mess. But what can you do with a hard plastic pen but make it dance and sing for you. The cheeks were glad for the reprieve in the fighting, let me tell you. And my mind was pleasantly surprised to find the teeth making creative use of their discipline situation.
I would have chewed gum if I still had any. Someone opened my car in the middle of the night two nights ago and cleaned it out of almost everything. My favorite sunglasses (they only cost me $5, mind you, but they were really nice glasses), a rooftop canoe carrier kit (still in the box. Another $5 purchase), my two-outlet power-inverter for recharging the laptop while driving (theoretically. It didn’t want to work in Benz, so I forgot to bring it inside), three garage door openers (for my garage, and the doors on my folks’ houses, 45 miles away), and every single piece of paper in the glove box (including tire warrantees, registration, a few maps and a tiny bottle of ibuprofen). He didn’t take my paint-smeared overalls or my insulated Krispy Kreme mug I thought I’d lost. He did take the rest of my gum, though. An nearly empty lighter, some pennies & nickels. Here’s the good news: I usually leave a spare key in the old Benz, just so I can put up the electric windows or run to pick up the kids. But I’d looked for it earlier that night, and mumbled to myself when I’d found that it had made its way back inside. And in the trunk I had my 4 weight and 5 weight flyrods, along with a Lowe lumbar pack filled with flyboxes and fishing stuff. That would have been a haul worth nearly a grand. . .
I could have smoked a Honduran Robusto to keep the teeth busy. It’s about right for the 45 minute drive. But the air is frigid and damp tonight, and I am still fighting a nasal thing that’s been holding an annoying sit-in up in my nose and head for nearly two weeks now. Cigars are not conducive towards good nasal passage health, especially when the windows aren’t cracked to insure the smoke’s quick egress. Anyway, I didn’t have a lighter.
So my teeth clattered away on that pen as I drove too fast down a dark road wet with nearly-frozen drizzle. I imagined what would happen if I’d lost control on a corner and slammed into a ditch. My groaning body would crawl from the steaming wreck, and I would limp toward the road. Headlights peak across the tops of the haggard sage bushes and briefly light up my pallid hands, streaked with black blood. I stagger to the road and collapse just as a Buick’s tires screech across the wet pavement to stop inches from my matted hair. In the hospital the doctors stabilize my wretched frame, and one of the nurses is confused my mumbling: “gone…Bic…rhythm and cheeks…” She ups the dosage on my IV and I fall into a deep sleep. In the morning, my wife wakes up from her uncomfortable position in a straight-backed chair to find me staring out the window. “What are you, nervous?”
