Of Fears and Cutting the Proverbial Cord

            Those of you that have followed my musings on Facebook know my fear of the dentist. I call it my heart attack; can hardly get out of bed fear. When I worked construction, the knowledge that at any moment, working at the heights I was working my life could end didn’t instill any fear remotely close to my fear of the dentist. A guy once rear ended me on the Dan Ryan on my way home from work. Instead of having any type of fear, I jumped out of my truck with a tire iron in hand yelling at the idiot that I was late to pick up my son’s new bowling ball. Hmm, had he had a white lab jacket on that said Dr. Anybody, I probably would have taken a step back or stayed my happy butt in my truck.  Watching commercials about dentists even causes some type of anxiety, yep I’m pretty bad.

            I can trace the dental fear back to when I was a kid. I’ve always had soft teeth and my brother and I weren’t allowed to eat a lot of candy. It’s true, that’s why there are old pictures of us with candy in our multi colored over the knee socks….in Alabama with my granddaddy. So anyway, I had a mouthful of cavities and the dentist my mom took us to had no concept of Novocain; at least that’s my long held belief. This short elderly woman with the long white coat and Dr. Anybody written in black script across the top decided to save time, she would fill all the cavities at once. It would be faster to do it without Novocain as she wouldn’t have to wait for it to kick in. I bet you can guess, that didn’t work out too well and my mom had to drag me kicking and screaming on the next visit. Once a dentist gave me laughing gas and we had gone to my grandma’s for a bit, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was on and I laughed through the whole movie.  I was sick for three days once those effects wore off, not pleasant for a kid when all your friends are outside playing and you’re stuck in bed.

            As I’ve aged, the fear is still intense; intense enough that my son laughs about it. Lucky brat, I’ve always had someone else take him to the dentist so I wouldn’t pass my fears on to him. I’ve just recently, in the past couple of years, been able to take him myself; I have to have ear buds in listening to music while he’s back with the dentist. I’ve started to develop my own theory about fears and the proverbial parental cord. It seems that when my mom was alive the pervasive fear of the dentist, failure, sometimes just breathing was highly intense and finally the fear of success. Whew that’s a lot to carry on ones’ shoulders, but I did it. When my mom passed, and that proverbial cord that I had been trying to cut forever and a day was finally cut, a bit of relief washed over me. Now before you say what a bad daughter for feeling that way, understand that my mom and I had a hate dislike relationship. I’ll just say she was an excellent grandmother to my son and he was blessed to have her; some people can be the greatest person around but that doesn’t make them great parents.

            Now, once that cord was cut, I felt like I could put on my big girl bloomers and rock the world. There’s still a little problem….the darn dentist. It’s almost comical to think that a middle aged woman (Dang, middle aged? When did that happen?!!!) can let a childhood fear almost paralyze her. The upshot is I’m not the only one that has this fear as an adult. There are some stories that are worse than mine, I wish I hadn’t heard them, but they’re out there. There should be a gathering of people that endured sadistic dentists that were embedded in draconian times, I’m sure that gathering would fill a few rooms.

            I guess the next chapter of life will be me trying to let go of that fear, I’m off to an ok start. I had my front tooth pulled recently and I didn’t go into a massive panic attack. There’s a whole story behind that tooth and it died a noble, smelly death. I didn’t even bother to remember the dentists’ name because I wasn’t expecting to go back. She is good, so I guess I’m going back. That was the first time ever that I didn’t have any pain at the hands of some sadist in a white coat. I have two more teeth that have to be yanked, so while this leaves me walking around temporarily missing a front tooth, finally having a healthy mouth is on the horizon. To the teacher that laughed when I ran into a wall and cracked my dearly departed tooth, I’d like to thank you for helping to instill some of that fear. Standing in front of a nine year old, in a fake guffaw and saying how much that’s going to hurt to get fixed in front of the whole class did wonders. I say that ever so sarcastically.

            I taught my son to have no fear of anything, not sure if that’s good or bad since he believes he’s invincible. What he should fear is mom knocking the hot mess out of him when he decides he thinks he wants to be grown at my expense, other than that, nope no fears. For those of you that have little kids, don’t laugh about their fears, they’re real. When parents make fun of their kids’ fears, especially like my mom did, I think that is a form of bullying. My generation and my parents’ generation come from a long line of bullying. We’re now in times when it’s ok to have fears and to be nurtured through those fears. That’s how you make the fears go away. So many health issues can be caused because of tooth problems. In my case, because of the fear they wouldn’t know if I had a heart attack because of bad teeth or out of fear of the dentist. Either way, I’m not trying to go in that direction. I think I just earned another pair of big girl bloomers J ~ Just my two cents

Four Word Epitaph

            Somewhere, in our educational journeys, we have been asked to write our own obituary. You can always think of what you would like to be said about you until you actually have to sit down and really think about it.  I still have mine from my days at Columbia College; it took me a week to write it. I was the first one that thought I was going to have fun with it and be goofy about it. Then we were given the guidelines that we would have to adhere to as we wrote what would be the last words written about us. I got serious with a quickness, with a side of snarky of course. I thought if you really know me, there won’t ever be last words about me. I know, I know, slightly presumptuous. At the “ripe old” age of 19, I was being asked what I would want people to remember me for. That became a sobering thought and something that was really hard to put into words.

            I wasn’t a mom yet, so loving mother was out. I couldn’t stand my parents, so loving daughter was out. I thought my best friend was an idiot (some things don’t change I guess), so thoughtful friend was out and I thought my brother was the dumbest piece of *oops* walking the planet.  I guess that just completely wiped out compassionate, dang. So thus began my journey to find some humanizing quality I could write about. I think that’s why it took me a week. I told my instructor I didn’t want to write the “typical black obituary”, not sure if that was the right thing to say. My instructor was famed WFLD TV journalist the late great Les Brownlee. Oh yea, he was black. I thought the guy was going to fall out of his chair. After calmly, but firmly ripping me a new butthole, he told me I had the potential to be one of the greatest black writers to come out of Columbia. Note, I didn’t say Chicago, neither did he. His next statement was that I should promptly explain what on this green earth I meant by that statement. I had two days to conjure up some explanation that may or may not be acceptable.

            It didn’t take long for me to figure out what to say and have some proof to show my instructor. I had an obituary from a relative and one from a friend who was white. I pointed out that in an obituary for a black person it always says “so and so” accepted Christ at an early age, survived by a relative from whatever city. In the obituary of a white person it never says if or when they accepted Christ, no one cares. No one cares where the relatives are located, it’s not like people are going over to find them. I explained I wanted to be somewhere in the middle, not so mainstream on either side. My instructor bought what I was selling and I was off the hook for a minute. I almost humanized myself and wrote a pretty good obituary.

            Well over twenty years later, I am a mom, I have written both my brothers’ and my moms’ obituaries and yes they were both written in that “typical” fashion. Some of my views are still the same, I still can’t stand my parents and my brother didn’t smarten up much before we lost him. The world of journalism lost Les Brownlee a few years ago, but the lessons he taught are still with me. When faced with constraints you’d be surprised what you can produce and that definitely made me step up my writing game. Somewhere in my writing there has to be truth, I don’t live in the world of make believe, besides, I have no imagination. Without having much of an imagination, I think I could still be quite creative. I would change the whole “write your own obituary” to Four Word Epitaph. The writer can come up with four words to describe themselves; the catch is they have to have an explanation. So here, I present to you my four word epitaph with explanations.

            Mom: In June 1993, this skinny little kid with smelly feet was born. That little bundle of parental dependency has become a young college man of parental dependency with smelly feet. Having such a lovely bundle pushed through the nether parts of her has allowed Carla to earn the “mom” moniker. Being a mom allowed Carla to humble herself and open her heart…well at least to her son.

            Brash: Carla definitely and some say defiantly raced through life heedless of the consequences. For some strange reason, Carla felt she was oblivious to rules and managed to find ways around everything. In the Carla wording, she could tear down a person without thinking twice, at the same time a Carla word could make a person feel like a thousand bucks. If Carla didn’t like what you said or did, she wouldn’t come right out and say it, but you would sure read about it later.

            Honest: It is said, if you don’t want to know the truth don’t talk to Carla. She was known to tell you about yourself whether you wanted to hear it or not. She lived her life teaching her son that being honest will get you places, always tell the truth. Carla was unapologetic about her willingness to hold a grudge. If you crossed her anytime in her life, you best believe she’s turning over in her grave thinking about it and waiting at the pearly gates to make sure your book of deeds has the truth and is spelled correctly.

            Leader: Carla led the way with anything she did. She led the way when she worked as a carpenter and a single mom. She led the way in education by earning her MBA and showing her son that anything can be accomplished. Carla was an early adopter with pretty much everything in technology and watched and complained when others started following her. I can guarantee you right now Carla is leading the way to the pearly gates because the rest of the people are trying to catch up to her before those books of deeds are opened.

            That about sums up my epitaph; of course lying in a box, we won’t be able to control what someone may or may not say, but if we could…..talk about the liberty we could take with other people. Ok, that wasn’t nice, but it sure would be fun. Of course this is all tongue and cheek, but to a certain extent it really describes me…for now. Think about your four words, would your friends agree with them? Heck would you even care if they agreed? Oh no, here comes the brash part of me…I could care less what people would think. Unless your persona is of glass, no one will see what’s really inside. Put out your four words~ Just my two cents

           

Before Puberty Struck- C.L. Anderson

                                                              

            Remember those days when as children our only cares were can we go out and play with our friends? Can we go to the beach tomorrow? Can anyone spend the night? Man, I miss those days. I remember when I was in the first head start program that was offered in this state, that’s where I got my first concussion. I remember my mom trying to get me in school when I was four because I was already reading; she was told I had to be five by a certain date. Woot, woot, thank goodness for January birthdays! Those days I was living in the town of East Chicago Heights. We didn’t know we were poor in that town, we just knew life was good.

            The one constant in those days were the friends I had at school. We started kindergarten together and graduated eighth grade together.  Something I didn’t realize until I was much older is the fact that a lot of people still have some type of relationship with the people they started grade school with. These were the friendships that were formed before the quirkiness of hormones kick in, before puberty struck. Your personalities and beliefs are carved out of the same institutional stone and you come to the realization that you really haven’t changed that much from when your tiny little feet walked through that kindergarten door and the collective tiny voices first learned the pledge together.

            It seems no matter what other people we all meet later in life, those that started grade school together still have a bond. By the time you hit that huge high school hallway and meet other people, hormones have kicked in full gear and puberty has started reshaping that nice little demeanor you used to have. No longer are you protected by the small groups you’ve known since you were five. You’ve entered a cesspool of personalities that have converged in a new world where everyone struggles for some type of attention. Life just started to really suck. In my case, I saw people I hadn’t seen since I was ten and boy were they different. I went to a different high school than my grade school friends. A lot of them got to stay together in high school, I had one person go to the same school; and that person ended up transferring out.

            Fast forward through life and look at the life you’ve led. You may keep in touch with the people you went to high school with, but sometimes you get hit with a dose of reality; they’re still the same way they were when you all walked the same crowded halls. By this time in your life, you may have reconnected with your grade school buddies. A light bulb goes off over your head, there’s something about returning to where you started, even if it’s only in the realm of your mind. There’s a familiarity that is very comfortable. The conversations are all about catching up and pictures of the kids. Reconnecting with the pre-pubescent part of your life also puts a lot of things you had at the back of your mind in better perspective.

            Think about this; are you more likely to react to bad news about your high school classmates or grade school classmates? For me I would honestly have to say anything relating to my grade school classmates would resonate stronger. I guess because we are a group of people that have known each other at face value, prior to putting on our individual masks we wore to get through high school. We are at the age to where we are experiencing losses in our lives that we never thought of when we were younger. When you come from a small school and you hear bad news from your classmates, it will hit you a little harder. Coming from a small school affords you the chance to have a second family and when part of that family goes through issues, it is felt by all.

            Before puberty strikes should be called “life at face value” Those that have known you during those times saw you being the best and worst of yourself. You struggled learning the same things in classes. You shared grade school crushes together and, in my case, we got our first taste of wine together. Yep, only in a private school can you expect an adult to legally contribute to the delinquency of a minor and put it under the guise of the Bible. Hey, that wine was pretty good!

            Even though I hate the school I went to, I do have to admit, that was definitely my foundation to rest my butt on and the cornerstone to model my life from. In that crappy environment, I learned my values. I learned to treat others the way I wanted to be treated. I learned that any one of my grade school friends are a phone call or an email away and we can pick up a conversation like we were still together. Now, that’s not saying I don’t appreciate the people I’ve gotten the pleasure to know since grade school, it’s been a fun ride for sure. I’m just saying that there’s always time to reflect on those that knew you before puberty struck. ~Just my two cents