This one should have been stopped in the quality control checkpoint

So. Sixty pounds overweight. My idea of exercise is tying my shoes without making little "oooff-y"noises. I have had one heart event, one stint, one roter-rooter thingie they do now somewhere in my heart, so my heart looks like a taped up muffler on an old Dodge Dart.

Up until a couple of years ago, I was a raging but-oh-so-sneaky "functional" drunk. And as I keep noting, all of my teeth are falling out. I barely graduated high school, I flunked out or quit college four...was it five? times. I am so dyslexic that I can puzzle a "left/right" up/down" situation to the point of tears. What else can I admit to? I pick my nose.

I was answering a letter to a complete stranger that I have met online. It is the odd thing about the internet that you can have all of these relationships on so many levels with people that you have never met. I was trying to explain that metaphorically I have taken a fork and stabbed my hand repeatedly in my life. I felt that others,  must be in the same situation. Maybe they need to know that there are others using a fork for the wrong purpose, too. It makes one feel so much better that they are not alone. There must be others in the same boat, or in a boat similar to mine.

Which leave me the question that I ponder regularly: Why is it so difficult to comprehend that none of us are perfect? And trying to figure the degrees of perfection is just silly and there are so many more productive, or at least funner ways to obsess.

When I went to the first dentist, he was the first doctor to blithely suggested that for $32,000 he could hook me up with some new teeth. I had just put, what? four grand into my mouth maybe five years prior? How could it all go to hell so badly?

Now that you all know all of my warts, I immediately figured it was all my fault and was yet another example of what an idiot I was and how I had taken the fork to my metaphoric hand again. As Darrell drove us home, I cried softly and let my mind wander to different family members that, when I was a child, would pop their dentures loose in their mouths to freak me out. I had visions of seeing false teeth in glasses of water. Like a slide show in my head, the faces of people with that awful pulled in look around their mouths where their teeth used to be, slid past in my mind's vision.

Since that line of thinking was so terribly depressing, I started looking at everyone else's teeth.


I remember telling Darrell excitedly last year that I thought Randy Jackson looked like he had some sort of fake uppers and nasty yellow lower teeth. Which meant, he must have been as broke as we were, and he was still allowed to be seen on national television! Or, maybe he is rich, but just doesn't give a damn what other people think! You have to figure he must be made of money, right?

And a snide side note: I'm always amazed at people that have so much money, yet they do not know how to dress and/or have ugly eyeglass frames. There are so many better things to choose from. Doesn't The Dog know about personal shoppers? I do yet, when I do buy new clothes, which are normally from Target, I pick them out because I have to. Even I know about personal shoppers. I mean, he could afford to pay someone to floss his teeth for him, for heaven's sake!

Yeah, now as I look at his picture here, I'm thinking the same thing you probably are; this Dog got the thirty-two-kay specials. I was lying to myself...once again.

And, I say to Randy Jackson: You Bitch.

Then I just decided to close my eyes and pretend it wasn't really happening.

Not that I have ever been good about getting out and mixing it up with people in social situations, definitely, as far as I was concerned, I now had a superb reason to hide behind the ficus tree at get-togethers.

So how many months pass before I find a new dentist, and am starting to get the work done? Six months at least, I put it off. The Denial. The Anger. The...well, you know the five steps dealing with death. I can tell you after the first "surgery" (the polite way of saying "having a bunch of teeth pulled"), it did not hurt any where as bad as I thought it would.

I don't look any more like a freak than I did before the surgery. It has affected my speech a little more; I have to be careful as I speak to enunciate carefully.

And I am getting into the humor of it more. And as long as I can laugh about it, the world can burn down.

This is where I am now. Looking a little gappy. But smiling. I had a lady come into work a couple of days ask me for a recommendation in dental care. I just looked at her and smiled when I asked "Are you sure I would be a credible source for such information?"