Cold

By W.R. Jones

    This jacket is the color of my skin getting out of the pool last night.   Jeeeesussss it is cold when you get out of the water at night with the wind whipping across the pool deck.  

    I was going to write about my suffering but after reading Lisa’s last post, I really can’t compete.  That woman will do anything for a story. 

    The class wasn’t too awfully bad not counting the incident where both calfs cramped at the same time.  Very hard to undo the cramps in the water when you can’t straighten your legs to touch bottom and you are not flexible enough to straighten them by hand.

   Ok, it was a little humiliating when the instructor said  shouted,  “Will one of you ladies please tow BILL to the side before he drowns?”

   I was considering a strong drink when I got home to loosen up those tight calf muscles when memory of the suffering of others came flooding back.   Namely, I can’t seem to hold my liquor.   Here are a few examples in case any of you would like to invite me over for a Super Bowl party:

       1.   My senior year in high school I was living with a family in Illinois.  New home, new carpet.  They went out Friday night and I decided to drink.  Started in on the scotch which I could only keep down by taking a shot then eating a cracker.   Apparently I passed out falling and breaking the coffee table then hurling on the new carpet.    I woke up the next day with a huge hangover and the man telling me he had cleaned the carpet and turned on some heat lamps to dry the spots.  He wanted me to shut off the lamps when the carpet was dry.  I next awoke to the smell of burning carpet.   They were somewhat put out with me – really surprised I’m still alive.  

      2.  In the navy on a blind date in San Francisco, blind drunk I guess.  At least I wasn’t driving.   We picked up my date and I threw up on her lap as she sat in the car.   Don’t remember the rest of the date.  I’m just guessing here, you understand, but I don’t think she had that much fun.

      3.  In the navy off a ship to a ship mate’s house for a weekend.   New sofa – new as in delivered that day.  Yep, you guessed it.  Perfect opportunity to throw up.   The man says and I quote, “Oh don’t worry, I will take care of it.  You must feel terrible, go lay down over there.”   I sort of remember his wife saying something like, “What the fuck is wrong with you bringing some fool like this to our home?   I’m going to kill him.  The sofa is ruined, a little blood won’t matter now.”   I don’t recall ever being invited back.  Of course, my memory isn’t so good anymore.  We were probably best of friends.

    I don’t drink like that anymore, at least not for the past week or so.

Nothing Funny About Root Canal

by Lisa

       I did a second drawing of “Beauty and the Beast” (see first) but this one is in charcoal on rough watercolor paper. I think I may give this to the endodontist went to Monday for him to post on the ceiling over the chair where he tortures people so they’ll have something to focus on. And here is where the faint at heart should turn away and read Little Women instead.

       Now, I know that some of you may think that Bill and I have a propensity for exaggerating, or I for complaining.   But the following is the true unadulterated story of a Marathon Man-like nightmare I experienced on Monday morning getting a root canal.

       I was told that I needed a root canal by my dentist and that it was too complicated for him to do. Time to see an endodontist. But who? He did not know who was a Blue Shield provider and I would have to find one on my own. Basically, I picked one at random from Blue Shield’s list but it turned out he was a UCLA professor aside from having had a practice for 25 years and I thought – well he must know his stuff. Now, I am not a good dental patient in the first place, but pile on the unknown of a random doctor with a “complicated” root canal, and I look like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man going through the door.

       After being coaxed into the chair, the doctor asks for the syringe. Whoa, hold on there dude, I tell him. Where is the nitrous oxide? He explains in his thick accent, the origin of which I can’t quite discern, that he no longer uses it because he found that people would come there just for the nitrous oxide. OH I’M JUST SURE. I want a root canal for the little buzz that a few whiffs of laughing gas will give you. He tried to convince me further of it’s lack of merit by telling me that it does not get rid of pain–that it only relaxes you. I really had to resist a California “DUH”.

       So he begins with injections number one, two and three. Then he places the rubber sheet with the hole for the victim tooth. He poked something in the gum or the tooth and I just about displaced the air above us. Hmmm. Not dead yet. Shot number four. Again with the rubber thing, again I jump. By now, I’m shaking badly and not feeling at all good about this. He gives plenty of time for shot number five to sink in. Now it is really time to commence.

       I grip the arm rests (funny they are called that), and I am ready to barrel through this, but the minute he starts drilling again, I get shooting pain and I shriek. He takes the syringe and injects it directly onto the tooth. The initial squirt hurts and makes me jump again. He drills and I shriek again. My feet come off the table, and I am in flight position trying to sit up now, but he sternly tells me not to panic and to sit back. Feet back up. More Novocaine on the tooth. Drilling and pain, I burst into tears, but he can’t stop in the middle. More Novocaine and pain, and this  went on until it was done and I was ready to drop from exhaustion. In fact, I stood up and almost passed out, and had to sit with my head between my legs for a few minutes.

       Apparently, what I had was hot tooth. One that could not be anesthetized. They asked me if I had taken any medication before coming since that can sometimes negate the anesthetic. Of course, I was thinking why, for the love of GOD, don’t you ask people that BEFORE they come for a root canal, but when your mouth is jacked open with two fists, metal instruments and a vacuum cleaner that is sucking your tonsils out, it’s kind of hard to do anything but grunt yes and no. And shriek. Indeed I had not taken anything.  I know I’m not looking forward to the next root canal in my life. In fact, I think I’ll convert to baby food.

Going Down Like The Dollar

By W R Jones

    Look like they are in trouble?  I had that same “deer in the headlights” look at last Thursday’s water aerobics class.   Erin convinced me I should take her class.  I, fool that I am, told her ok, but I thought the class was for fat old women.  I was to eat those words, or maybe drown in them is a better description.

    Except for one young boy there with his mother, I was the only male.  I was expecting to be in the pool with a herd of water buffalo so I was pleasantly surprized at the number of attractive women.  Feeling this might not be such a bad class after all, I got into the water.   It is very odd, but I could have sworn I heard sighs of relief from the other students.   They had most likely been overwhelmed by how good I looked in my home made trunks. 

    I’ve always been fashion conscious although you wouldn’t know it by listening to my daugher’s comments on my apparel.   I know thongs are in style with the younger (way younger) set, but with the recent financial disasters I could not afford to buy one.  I created my own design using a Glad bag and a couple of rubber bands.   I was looking like 10,000 dollars worth of nickels.

    For the first 20 minutes we waved our arms and legs around in the water.  It was sort of ballet type moves so I was glad it was underwater where no one could see.   I started thinking the class was a waste of time and then…. it got a LOT harder.   We were told to raise both feet out of the water in front of us and paddle back and forth across the pool in this position.   Then, this not seeming hard enought to suit Erin, do the same thing with both feet out of the water but legs spread.  

    I was flailing in an effort to keep my head out of the water so’s I could breathe once in a while.   In a vain effort to deceive (this is so unlike me), I tried keeping one foot on the bottom and one foot out of the water moving back and forth so fast it would seem like both feet were up.   The water was too deep.   Erin, sweetheart that she is, made sure everyone in class knew who the drowning old geezer was; “you alright over there, BILL?”   At least I think that was what she was saying.  It is hard to hear with your head under water.

    I’m dying thinking there is no way I can do this sort of thing for 40 minutes.  Meanwhile this 70 year old walrus is coming at me from across the pool with her feet high out of the water, a serene look of no effort on her face, and skimming along on the top like a water bug.

   Later, Erin announced an exercise to the class that had them all groaning.  Oh lordy, what is coming now?   She told them she was going to be a little easier for my sake.   It was treading water with first one hand out, then the other, then both.   By then I was hanging on to the side for dear life asking myself what had I been thinking to try this.

    Like many things in life the best part is saved for last.   That would be getting out of the water on a winter night; with the car parked a LONG ways away (so I could have a cigar and Snickers) without being chastised.  I literally shivered my ass off.  It came right off.  Now my pants hang concave back there.