Clyde Short:

As unkind as it is to say, Clyde Short was ugly. His name did not fit him any better than the baggy overalls or plaid shirt that drooped down his frame as though his shoulders were mere coat hangers. He was a long six feet tall, meaning he was a fraction of an inch over six feet from head to toe. He was as thin as a rail, bug eyed, buck toothed and jug eared. He also had a protruding adam’s apple that bobbed when he spoke. His gauntness made his larger than average hands and feet look gigantic. His uncle Charley said he looked like something from the bone yard. Even his mother said there was no way to pretty him up. Furthermore, his clothes and his slow drawl made him appear to be every bit the country bumpkin.

Times were hard. His folks did not need his mouth to feed. They did not need the model A Ford either. So he paid what he could afford to pay for the car and headed west. His destination was California. He really wanted to see the ocean, and he understood that folks were doing pretty well in that state. He literally worked his way across the country, picking up whatever odd jobs he could find to pay for the gasoline and a meal now and then. This was not easy because people were always reluctant to hire such a scarecrow. Somehow he managed. He arrived at Long Beach dead broke.

Hal Birch had a machine shop. His business had barely survived the worst of the depression, but things were looking up. There was a war in Europe and lend lease was allowing the allies to buy more war materials from the U.S. Hal seized the opportunity. He converted his machine shop into a factory to make shell casings for mortar rounds. He was standing on the loading dock watching his men struggling to load the trucks. A model A Ford pulled onto the property and stopped near the loading dock. Out of the car stepped a scarecrow.

“Need some help?” the scarecrow asked.

Although Hal could use another man he almost said no. The kid was so thin that a strong wind could probably break him. It was difficult to imagine him having the strength to load trucks.

“Those boxes are heavy. Do you think you can handle it?”

“I ain’t no stranger to hard work. If it needs movin’, I’ll move it.”

Hal gave the kid a good looking over. He was no more than twenty years old. Most kids his age were quick and agile. They also had endurance. Maybe he could put the kid on the packing line. He should be able to keep up with the flow if he had eaten recently.

“What’s your name?”

“Clyde Short.”

“I’m Hal. Follow me.”

They walked to Hal’s office. Hal handed Clyde the employment form and Clyde signed it. They then walked to the front of the factory and Clyde entered his name and the time on the appropriate line of the sign in sheet. It was a short walk from there to the packing line.

“Martin!”

“Yeah, Hal! The man that replied was forty some odd years old. He was short and stocky with a bulldog smoking pipe protruding from his round face. Most of the men where Clyde was from smoked corncob pipes when they were at work. If they owned a pipe made of briar they either inherited it or had some spare cash when they bought it. It was a prized possession, and they did not want to risk breaking its stem at work. So they put it on the mantle and smoked it while relaxing after dinner.

“Martin, this is Clyde. Start him off in packing and rotate Ben to the dock for now.”

There was no handshake or unnecessary words, which was fine with Clyde. He wasn’t much of a talker anyhow.

“Ben this is Clyde. Show him how to pack. Then rotate to the loading doc!”

The look on Ben’s face said he was not too happy about rotating to the loading doc early. He picked up a pair of gloves and handed them to Clyde.

“Here you go, Okie. Nothing complicated about it. Put one of the gloves on your weak hand to start out.” Ben picked up a mortar round casing to demonstrate what he was saying. “Cover the threads with one or more of your fingers, and turn the casing a couple of times like this. If the thread snags your glove it has a burr or rough spot and you toss it in the reject pile. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. This one’s all right. You don’t find a bad one often. It’s important to put them in the box right. The guys loading the powder don’t have time to look or turn them, and we catch hell if they’re not packed right. They stand in the box this way. Now start packing!”

Clyde quickly fell into a rhythm. Ben left for the loading dock. The rounds were heavier than they looked. Clyde had to lift with his left hand for a while to give his right hand a rest. He inspected and packed for two hours. Then the whistle blew to signal lunch time. He walked to his car and lit his corncob pipe. He could only afford to smoke two bowls a day. One after lunch and one after whatever he could afford to eat at the end of the day.

Hal had to walk past Clyde’s car to get to his. “Where’s your lunch?” he asked.

“Don’t have one.”

Hal sighed. “Well, I can’t have you passing out on me from hunger. Come on!”

Clyde reluctantly followed. They drove to a nearby diner.

“Order anything you want. It’s on me.”

“You should take it out of my pay.”

“I like your attitude, but if I do that it will take you too long to get on your feet.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A waitress came to the table and took their orders. Clyde ordered a hamburger and coffee.

“You’ll be learning something new when we finish lunch.”

Clyde grinned.

“I thought you’d like that. The tasks are repetitive, and I’ve found out it’s better to rotate my workers after a few hours to keep them from burning out.”

The waitress brought the meals, and Clyde lit into the hamburger as though he had not eaten in days. This was understandable because it had been almost thirty hours since his last meal. Not that he was counting the hours. He had learned not to do that.

“I understand you did well at packing. How are you getting along with the other workers?”

Clyde knew it always took a while for people to get over his looks enough for him to prove himself to them, but that is not what a boss wants to hear. “I haven’t given it much thought,” he said. “I reckon holdin’ up my end of the log is doing right by them though.”

Hal smiled. “It’s doing right by everyone.”

“I won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure you won’t.”

Hal discretely watched Clyde several times during the day. The kid learned new tasks quickly, and he seemed to have an instinct for reducing the motions it took to perform each of the tasks assigned to him. At the end of the day Clyde was standing by his model A. He had his corncob pipe in his mouth but was putting off lighting it. Hal walked up to him.

“Where are you staying tonight?”

“I was hoping I could sleep in my car here.”

“No good. The cops check my lot, and we can’t have you getting arrested for vagrancy.”

“Tough place to live.”

“It’s all right. I’ve got a place for you to stay. The rent’s cheap, and you can pay it weekly, starting with the paycheck you’ll get this Friday.”

“You sure they’ll trust me to do that.”

“It’s my place.”

“That’s really kind of you.”

“Nonsense. It’s not making me any money sitting there empty.”

Clyde followed Hal to the property. Much to Clyde’s delight the place was near the beach. An oil field bordered the property, and flames shooting out of the stack of a topping plant would obviously light up the night. It was the oil field and topping plant that had spoiled Hal’s plan for the place. His property held a large house and six small bungalows. He had built the bungalows thinking he could rent them out to people who wanted to stay at the beach during their vacations. The rotten egg smell from the topping plant soon made that plan impractical. Four of the bungalows were now rented out to workers at the factory. The main room of the one where Clyde would be staying had two beds, a gas cooking stove, a small refrigerator and a sink. The other room was a bathroom. Clyde could not have been more pleased if it had been a palace. There were still a lot of folks back home who did not have electricity or indoor plumbing.

“Come to the main house for dinner after you move in your things.”

“That’s right neighborly of you.”

“Your first week’s rent includes dinner, and I’ll have my wife pack a lunch for you.”

Clyde took a shower, put on his cleanest dirty shirt and slicked back his hair. Hal opened the door and introduced Clyde to his wife, Laura, and his children, Alice and Brandon.

“Pleased to meet you all. I hope I didn’t keep you waitin’ dinner on me.”

“Not at all,” Laura said. “I just put it on the table.”

Hal said the grace, and they started passing the food around the table.

Clyde helped himself to the pot roast. He smiled as he put some gravy on the mashed potatoes. “I’m a lucky man tonight. What with this meal and you kind folks invitin’ here.”

“Think nothing of it,” Laura said. Where are you from?”

“Kentucky, but folks at the factory seem to think it’s Oklahoma.”

Hal did not look pleased. “I’ll bet you’re not the only one they’re calling Okie.”

“No sir, I’m not.”

“I’ve been trying to discourage that.”

“So it’s not a polite name.”

“Far from it. It’s used by people to tell folks who escaped the dust bowl that they’re not welcome here.”

“I’ve been called worse things, and by total strangers.”

Laura smiled, but there was no joy in it. “People are far too mean.”

“That must be upsetting to someone with your kind heart.”

“Thank you for saying I have a kind heart. I think you do too.”

“A fella who looks like me has to display kindness or they’d run him outta town.”

This made everyone laugh. After dinner they walked into the living room. The men lit their pipes and Laura served them an after dinner coffee.

“I’d turn on the news now, but my radio conked out this morning.”

“Probably a tube. Bet I can fix it for you.”

“Where’d you learn about radios?”

“I picked up a book on electrical things, and I enjoy tinkerin’.”

“Well, tinker away.”

Clyde was able to fix the radio, and when a switch on one of the lathes broke he was also able to fix that. One day he walked into Hal’s office. “If we can get some ramps with rollers on ‘em, I think we could speed up the loadin’ of the trucks.”

“How do you figure?”

“The doc is just a tad higher than the truck beds. It ain’t much but it’s enough. Pull the hand trucks up to the ramp. Set the boxes on the rollers and just let ‘em roll. With no one carryin’ we can put a man in the truck to help the driver stack.”

“How much time do think that will save?”

“Don’t know. I think we should test it without letting the trucking company know what we’re doin’.

“Why the secrecy?”

“I’m guessing the high mileage rate is to compensate for the time they spend at the doc. If we can get ‘em to lower the mileage and charge us an hourly fee at the dock we’ll come out ahead because they’ll be figurin’ how long it normally takes.”

“All right, I know where I can borrow a truck. It’s your project.”

Clyde’s test went well. The trucks were loaded much quicker, but he thought the men worked faster than they would on daily basis so he left himself some wiggle room. Clyde bought some new clothes so that his appearance would let the trucking company know he was part of management. It was some hard haggling but he got what he wanted. He presented the contract to Hal with a big grin on his face.

“Here’s what we’ve been payin’ per round trip and here’s what we’ll be payin’.

“I can’t believe how low the hourly rate is. How did you get them to do that?”

“They were figurin’ a longer loadin’ time. We’ll have our men do the stackin’ to keep their drivers from gold brickin’. The drivers will go for it because it means they won’t have to heft the cargoes.”

“Human nature.”

“Yes sir. And my good looks played a part in it. No one wants to believe that someone who looks as goofy as I do can get the better of ‘em in a deal.”

Hal was laughing. “Then I guess there are some advantages to not being pretty.”

“Damn few, but I make the most of what there is.”

After the Japanese bombed Pear Harbor, Hal landed an even bigger contract with the government. Clyde tried to join the army.

“I recon I ought to kill some of those damn Japs for what they done to us,” he told Hal.

“Yes, but don’t hate them all. The ones I know here are good people. They consider themselves to be Americans now. I’m afraid this war is going to be very hard on them.”

“I suppose you’re right about that. Folks are too riled up to look beneath the surface. Some of the men fighting us probably don’t have a choice either.”

Fortunately Clyde had flat feet. The army doctor thought he was too fragile to be a soldier anyhow. The factory was now full of female workers because most of the men were serving in the military. Clyde married one of the female workers. She was no raving beauty, but she was not downright ugly. Because of the housing shortage Clyde and his bride lived in the little bungalow they rented from Hal. As bad as the smell from the topping plant might have been there were people who had it far worse. Some of the oil workers were actually camped out in the oil fields. Hal was making so much money and Clyde was so valuable that he let Clyde buy an interest in the company. When he became an old man Clyde liked to tell the story about how an ugly country mutt became an industrialist. He always laughed as he finished the story: “And I did it in the glamour capital of the world!”

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on Nov. 25, 2010

Ho! Ho! Oh!

Can't get there from here

Although peace on earth and good will to all people is a wish or prayer we should like to have all year, people who think it would be nice to have Christmas all year round do not know how undesirable that would be. It is not the message that is the problem it is the celebration. There is only so much celebrating a person can do. I cannot even imagine myself getting up in the small hours of the morning to bargain hunt on the day after Thanksgiving. Celebrations are a sprint rather than a marathon. Two weeks is more than enough time to prepare for and enjoy the festivities. I have often heard that holidays are stressful. You would think that starting my shopping a mere two weeks before Christmas would be stressful, but it is not. I still manage to go with the flow. This year was different.

First there was a blown engine in the truck. It cost a small fortune to replace that engine, and once it was replaced the starter conked out on me. The gifts this year were going to be much smaller than usual. That is disappointing but not disastrous. It is not really about the gifts; they are merely tokens of love. The love is still there whether the gifts are grand or small. The big thing was all the time that was lost on those repairs. Now another time bandit reared its ugly head. It was seven days of unrelenting rain. When I drove home from work on Monday I was playing dodge rocks in the fog. The rules are simple. You take a road cut into the hill. Then add to that hill enough water to loosen the hill’s grip on the boulders and rocks it is holding until it lets some of those boulders and rocks fall down onto the road. The challenge for the driver is to avoid hitting those rocks and boulders while driving through the downpour and the fog. It helps if the driver is able to ignore the strong possibility that a boulder might land on his head while he is doing this. Fortunately I arrived home in tact. The game, however, made me realize that slides of a greater magnitude were probably in the offing.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are my days off of work. In spite of the rain, I was able to complete most of my shopping on Tuesday. On Wednesday the rain, which was already heavy, greatly increased. I spent a large part of Wednesday diverting the water flowing from the hill behind my house so that the water flowed around the house rather than through it. Then it started snowing. I would normally call the volume of snow that fell a dusting, but this was really more of a slushing. It was wet, heavy and slicker than snot. There was no way I was going to drive through it if I had a choice, and I had a choice. I poured a cup of coffee and stayed at home.

On Thursday the rain let up. Now it was time to make another foray into the market place for the last few gifts. The closest highway that would take my brother and I down the hill to the city was closed because of slides. The other highway that would take us down the mountain would also take us twenty miles out of our way, and there was a long detour around a slide on that highway. When we joined up with the highway again I could not help noticing the rocks and debris piled along the side of the road. CALTRANS obviously had its hands full trying to keep most of that road open. We took the highway to the 10 freeway and headed east. The traffic was doing the infamous stop and crawl. We decided to get off the freeway and take the surface streets only to find that they were also jammed up.

One of the things that made this area so ideal for growing oranges is the rich topsoil that washed into the valley from the mountains. So seldom do we receive so much rain that it is all too easy to forget where that topsoil came from. When we do get that much rain it becomes all too obvious that those things we call washes are actually washes, and that the roads cutting through those washes are a part of them. Now that the flood reclaimed the washes those roads were useless. Detour after detour mocked us by saying “you can’t get there from here.” And the “there” we were trying to get to soon turned into the anywhere we could travel to get somewhere to the south east of where we were. Everyone was trying to navigate through a clogged maze. It was an exhaust spewing mass of confusion and frustration. We turned onto a road taking us northwest.

“There is no southeast today,” my brother said.

“It’s a forbidden direction, and only those foolhardy souls who have far more time and patience than we do would think of challenging the prohibition,” I said.

It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, and we stopped to have lunch. After lunch we went with the flow. Which is to say we traveled northwest. The only thing flowing in the other direction was water and mud and rocks. We played dodge rocks on the rim, took the detour, and had a stiff drink when we got home. The television news broadcasts were showing houses filled with mud, houses sliding down hills, and cars that were almost completely buried. We were lucky. The price we paid for being reminded of where the topsoil came from was only our time and a bit of frustration. It is now Christmas eave. I did not shop where I wanted to shop today, but I did managed to finish my shopping. The gifts and the fact that I am working half of Christmas day do not seem that important. It is still Christmas, and I am grateful for my family, my friends, and for a warm place to sleep. I understand we are supposed to get another storm on Christmas day. I never thought I would say this, but I would rather have snow than rain right now.

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on Dec. 24, 2010. 

Dog Days Of Winter

Mabel the snow Schnauzer

Our Miniature Schnauzer, Mabel, literally swam through the snow at times because her legs were too short for her feet to reach the ground when the snow was deep. She loved the snow anyhow. In this picture the snow clinging to her got there because she rolled in it. Frequently, the only way to get all the snow out of her hair was to wait for it to melt. Imagine me chasing her around the house with a towel in an effort to keep her from soaking our furniture.

The first real snow of this winter reminded me of Mabel.  My memories of her are happy ones. 

Happy Hanukkah!

Our most joyful season is well under way.  Whether we are wishing each other a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, or Happy Holidays we are embracing the spirit of “peace on earth and good will to all people.”  I believe Hanukkah begins on Tuesday, the 16th of this month.  As you light the candles to celebrate the miracle know that I wish the best for you and your family.  Shalom Aleichem my friends, and happy holidays to all!

Watch the Language

Clarity of thought and clarity of expression are what we strive to achieve. Learning a language, particularly one as rich as English, is a life long endeavor. We have incorporated so many words from so many different languages. As a result we have many words with very similar meanings and many words that sound similar but have very different meanings. While this large vocabulary allows us to express our thoughts more precisely it also makes it far more likely that we will commit some rather colossal blunders. Indeed we even have words to describe those blunders, words such as malapropism and oxymoron.

In Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play, The Rivals, Mrs. Malaprop is a pretentious character. She tries to use ten dollar words to express nickel thoughts. This causes her to use words that sound similar to the words she intends to use but which have different meanings than she intended.

Examples of malapropisms:

“The politician stated that the greatest challenge we face today is the defecate.” This sentence makes no sense. Does the politician consider our greatest challenge to be a shitty subject or did he mean to say deficit?

“He placed a copy of the legal document in a suppository.” If the document was a complaint I am sure the person against whom it was filed would be quick to tell the filer where the suppository should be placed.

This is fun. Hey, I’m on a role. Oops! I just used a word that sounds like the one I wanted to use but which has a different spelling and a different meaning than I intended. I am blaming it on my spell checker. Can we call it a spellcheckaprop? If we can, will “spellcheckaprop” become a new word? In this case the creation was intentional. What do we call it when the creation is unintentional, such as President Harding’s inadvertent coinage of the word “normalcy?”

Sarah Palin refutes, disputes and hoots. She does not repudiate she refutiates. I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant repudiate when she typed “refutiate” on her blog or twitter. Her error amuses me, but some of my mistakes are as bad. I almost abbreviated twitter as twit. Using that abbreviation would not have been a good thing to do. People should be careful about how they abbreviate words and names. I know my friends at the Assembly of God have a strong objection to people abbreviating the name of their church as “Ass of God.” Gee, I wonder why.

Acronyms: “Sears handy indoor toilet comes out as shit.” This phrasing is not as accurate as saying that the acronym is SHIT, but the first phrase could be appropriate if you are making a statement about the quality of Sears’ toilets. I have also heard DOG, the Department of Oil and Gas, referred to as the kennel because of its acronym. I am sure you can probably come up with some funnier examples of acronyms.

The humorous results of acronyms are because of the position of the letters. The same results can occur because of the position of words even when that positioning is perfectly proper. If the Master at a school has the surname of Bates, for instance, he is bound to cringe a bit when he hears his students referring to him as Master Bates.

Oxymoron: I enjoy the use of a good oxymoron, which in and of itself may be an oxymoron. The humor, of course, arises from the apparent contradiction. “The manufacturer of this car really spared no skimp. You can’t even open the back windows.” Then there is Samuel Goldwyn’s, “include me out.”

Well, I have had enough fun with the language for now. I may strive for clarity of thought and expression, but I will admit that I do not always achieve it. Given the amount of time I give myself to proof read and edit what I write I am bound to make a few mistakes that will cause you to laugh at me rather than with me. I am not insulted by your laughter on those occasions. I also laugh when I discover those errors.

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on Nov. 9, 2011

How Do You Know It Ain’t Broke?

Everything that moves wears out, breaks down, and has to be repaired. I suppose the human body is no exception, but there is a very wonderful difference between it and none living objects. The human body will protect and repair itself. It fights off dangerous bacteria and viruses every day. It will seal off and patch cuts, and it will fuse broken bones. Over the centuries of our existence we have learned how to help it do those things by stitching up cuts, setting bones and taking antibiotics to fight infections. All of those medical advancements are good, but for the most part we still depend on the body’s ability to protect and repair itself. I have to admit that I depend on my body’s ability to do that more than most people do. As I have stated before, I have the white coat syndrome. The moment I walk into a doctor’s office my heart rate and blood pressure increase, which makes it very difficult for doctors to get an accurate reading. I hate being poked, prodded and examined. Because of this phobia I have always followed the philosophy of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Even on those rare occasions when I am sick I just let the old body do its healing thing.

Recently, however, I have experienced some digestive tract problems. There was a sharp but intermittent pain. Then I noticed that I was passing black stools. Black stools often indicate bleeding in the upper digestive tract, and that scared the hell out of me. I went to urgent care. The doctor there examined me and ordered blood tests. There was no indication of blood in my rectum and the blood tests did not reveal an infection. Still the sharp pains continued off and on. The doctor referred me to a gastroenterologist for a procedure that required the doctor to insert a camera into my throat to my stomach and then into the small intestine. The fasting before the procedure was not all that difficult, but I wondered how was going to keep from gagging during the procedure.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said as the nurse inserted a needle into my arm. “You will be awake during the procedure but you won’t remember it.”

I do not know what drug was in that syringe, but it sure worked its magic. I do not remember anything that was done from that point on. This procedure did not indicate that anything was wrong with me. Nor did the scans done of my digestive system. Unfortunately, the intermittent pain continued. The severity of the pain, however, decreased and eventually ceased entirely. Now I was faced with what I considered to be a difficult choice. The problem was that the gastroenterologist had also scheduled me for a colonoscopy. There were two things that kept me from canceling that appointment. Since the pain had been intermittent I could not be sure it would not return. I was also past the age when doctors say you should have a colonoscopy as part of your preventative health care program. I fought off my phobia and tried to prepare myself for the unpleasant procedure.

They gave me a gallon container that had a white powdery substance in the bottom of it. If that substance had been mailed to me I am sure I would have viewed it with a great deal of suspicion. Hazmat teams are often called out for less than that. I must admit that I viewed the powder with some foreboding even though I knew what it was. All of the literature about it mentioned its dreadful taste. I was supposed to fill the gallon container with water to dissolve the powder. Then I was supposed to drink all of it at a rate of eight ounces every ten minutes. It came with a flavoring I could add to it, and the instructions said to gulp the eight ounces as quickly as possible. My brother told me the flavoring seemed to make it worse when he had to drink it in preparation for his colonoscopy. He advised me to man up and take it straight. I followed his advice. I cannot say I was pleasantly surprised when I ingested the first eight ounces. It did not go down easily, but the taste was not as dreadful as I had been led to believe. The problem was that I had to drink so much of it, and the taste was cumulative. By the time I finished drinking the full gallon it tasted as dreadful as the warnings indicated.

The fact that this concoction did what it was supposed to do was no great joy either. I had been very strict about my diet for two days and I fasted on the day that I ingested the laxative. I was not about to go through this procedure more than once. As a result of the strict diet and fasting what I expelled was mostly water, and there so damn much of it. I awoke the following morning with a very sore rectum; the thought that someone was going to shove something up it was absolutely appalling. But it was too late to turn back. Believe me, no one in his right mind would go through that preparation without following through with the procedure.

I undressed in one of the examining rooms and put on the gown that left my posterior exposed. They had me lie down on a gurney and wheeled me into another room. The doctor entered.

“We met in another galaxy a long, long time ago. Do you remember?” she asked.

I remembered her, but I did not remember the procedure. I probably should have said yes, but my mind was on what was about to be done to me and I said no.

“You were complaining about black stools at the time.”

“Yes,” I answered.

“The thing to remember this time is not to try to push out the scope I’m trying to insert.”

The fact that people would try to do that came as no great surprise. She was, after all, inserting that scope into an exit. Trying to expel the wrong way driver would be pretty instinctive. But I resolved to try to fight that instinct, and I told her that. I do not know whether I kept that resolve because they gave me the same drug they had given me before. When I became aware of my surroundings again I saw a nurse looking down at me.

“Since I can’t remember the procedure I can only hope that I behaved myself.”

“You were better than most.”

I hope she was not just being polite. The doctor entered and told me she detected no problems that needed further treatment. That was a relief to say the least.

“You’re bound to be a bit sore,” the doctor said. “I know you want to get out of here and get something to eat, but avoid rough or hard to digest foods for the next few days.”

In spite of the bloating from having them treat my bowls like a balloon I really enjoyed my breakfast and the dinner I ate that night. It was not until the next morning that I had finally blown out all of the air they pumped into me, and it was not until I had blown out all of the air that I began to think about doctors and nurses. The doctor who treated me was a very personable lady. I am sure I would enjoy interacting with her when she is not shoving things down my throat or up my butt. That I suppose is one of the problems with being a health care provider. Since doctors and dentists often have to do things that cause pain or discomfort most people do not look forward to seeing them in a professional setting. I hope my phobia does not cause me to do things that make it more difficult for those good people to treat me. I also hope that I have not discouraged any of you from getting the preventative care you need.

The incident I have written about here makes me realize I am reaching an age when more things can go wrong and at a time when my body is less able to heal itself. Early detection is particularly important as you age. I doubt that I will seek all of the preventative care I should get, but I am going to try to get better about doing that.

First published in macsbackporch.fictionforall.com on Nov. 3, 2010