I have discovered the reason for the high cost of braces. Judging by the shocking number of appointments my son and my wallet are facing, I believe the doctor straightens one tooth at a time. "Next visit, we will do an incisor!" The kid does not even have the scrap metal on his teeth yet, and already I'm looking into purchasing a time share in the office and moving in. It will cost less than the gas. It will also save time and money on the therapy I will need if I (once again) lose my ability to drive without "weirding out." That is a technical term, for you laypeople, meaning "to exhibit the primal reaction to fear that a caveman would exhibit." It involves some screaming, some crying, and throwing rocks at the cause of the fear, such as the Tyrannosaurus. Of course I am kidding. Everyone knows very few Tyrannosauruses live in Utah, because they are allergic to green Jell-O.
Anyway, for today's appointment I had to visit some far-off office in their network, because the local office could not insert his "spacers." These are little rubber blobs, which they shove in between his teeth. If you can successfully get corn on the cob lodged in your teeth, you are capable of placing spacers between them. But to convince you how highly technical this procedure is, because they want to charge you large sums of money for it, they send you practically to a foreign country to have it done. "They will only fall for the necessity of a 'spacing fee' if we send them to Japan for it," said their business managers. So, I had to travel to the other side of the valley to cram old newspaper rubber bands into my son, which meant using (insert "Jaws" theme music) THE FREEWAY. I have not driven on one in years. I am actually not kidding. It is the most terrifying space since a clown museum. (I know I am not the only one who finds clowns frightening. Admit it.)
In an effort to calm myself, I listened to some soothing Metallica and drank a bunch of Diet Mountain Dew. Really the most appropriate prep song would have been "Eye of the Tiger." Remember when it played in the background of "Rocky?" Stallone was psyching himself up for the freeway drive to the ring. Getting pummelled by flying fists is one thing, but facing thousands of drivers with road rage and no attention span is the true extreme sport.
Fellow drivers will cut you off and flip you off. Happily, I completed over half of my trip without anyone doing this to me. Really. I could not make it ONE trip without somebody trying to force me out of my lane and then giving me the finger when I had the audacity to honk. However, the same person did both of them, so perhaps that only counts as one incident, thereby skewing the road rage incident statistics. Furthermore, he was in a minivan, and as the driver of one myself, I know what happens to a person when they get behind the wheel. The adrenaline of a thousand soccer moms snapping at their children will pulse through your veins. Or, maybe he was not giving me the bird at all. Possibly, he was just pointing out some nice scenery by the side of the freeway and gently guiding my van to it with his vehicle. I did see some particularly scenic railroad tracks and a dumping ground that looked like a fun place to go searching for tetanus. Thank you for pointing them out, Obscenely Gesturing Minivan Guy.
Sooo... that was MY day. How was yours?
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