Creeping Up to the Green Light

I spent the last few days at a seminar for instructor candidates for AARP driver safety classes.

The seminar was led by two retired public high school principals, a handsome, intelligent, and competent married couple. Generally, they don’t tell their regular Driver Safety classes they were school principals, as it intimidates the students too much.

 

I sprayed my hands with sanitizer throughout the session and did not come down with my wife’s flu, (though I think I have it now.) I told everyone not to touch me. I have no way of knowing if anyone is now sick from being around me.

 

The other four candidates were very interesting and competent. One was a retired army sergeant. At dinner he told us about his military service in Vietnam. He flew as a passenger in small reconnaissance planes a few hundred feet above the ground to map the landscape, as there were no photos from satellites or from unmanned drones in those days. “When the planes returned, they were full of bullet holes, but I never was,” he told us. Though when he got home from Vietnam he got beat up in a bar by people angry about the war.

Another candidate is a police officer from a small town. When he talked about unsafe driving and about often happens when people drive unsafely, he brought a lot of credibility to the discussion. He was very friendly and unassuming, and we all liked him, but we agreed he should not tell his students he is a cop until well into the class.

The third candidate teaches driver training to high school students. I think he is looking forward to working with grown ups.

The fourth candidate teaches employee training sessions for a large supermarket chain. She is very competent and personable and very sharp on her timing.

The instructors directed each of us to make a six-minute presentation on the second day of the class. The warned us, “Everyone talks longer than they think they do.”

Each instructor candidate displayed a unique personality and style, while making a competent, articulate, well-organized presentation. Each ran over his allotted time, except for the supermarket trainer, who was spot on to about five seconds.

At the start of my presentation, I said, “I will cheat,” and put my timer on the podium. However, at dinner the night before, I asked to one of the instructors the answer to a question I could not locate, and said, “With your permission I will cheat.”

He said, “That is the first time one of my candidates has asked me if it is OK for him to cheat. I will say, ‘That is fine.’” Then the cop helped me cheat, also.

So at the start of my presentation, I said, “If the principal of a school and a traffic policeman helps me to cheat, I will call you both as witnesses when I get hauled into court.”

The other presentations were better than mine, although mine was OK. At the end, we (politely) gave each other feedback and criticism. To me, they said, “We wore really worried at the beginning of your presentation, but you got there quite well at the end.” I interpreted that as, “For a crazy person, you do quite well.”

Country Dentist

When we were preparing to move to our Puget Sound island, a filling broke and I needed a dentist in a hurry. I decided to bite the bullet, so to speak, and go to a dentist on the island. The phone book listed two dentists in the nearest small town to where our home was being built. I called one. The receptionist I talked to presented her boss and office very well, but the best day for me at that time was Friday, and that dentist closed his office on Fridays.

So I was left with Frank. I did a search for information about Frank on the web. I found one odd but promising comment on the web site of Powell’s books (the leading bookstore in Portland, Oregon.). I came across an interview with a moderately successful writer who told a charming and admiring anecdote about Frank the dentist. I won’t put it here because it has too much distinguishing detail, but if you really want to read it, email me and I will link you to it if I trust you. If a fairly successful author plugs a dentist on Powell’s Books, that’s good enough for me to give him a try, so I made an appointment. Apparently all of Frank’s patients have used him for many years, so his receptionist must have been a bit surprised to have a new patient call her out of the blue, but she handled the surprise with aplomb.

When I went in to see Frank and to get my painful tooth attended to, I met a tall, laconic man about a year younger than myself. His pleasant, competent, attractive receptionist is also a dental assistant, but I was a bit surprised to discover that Frank almost never called her in to assist him.

Unlike every other dentist I ever had, Frank did about 95% of his work by himself. He grabbed all his tools of torture by himself. When it came time for my six-month cleaning, Frank did the cleaning himself instead of using a hygienist.

“Do you ever use hygienists?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes, I have a few times, but they always have babies and move on, so finally I decided it was easier to do it myself,” he replied.

I figured if my dentist does the cleaning himself instead of handing it down to a hygienist, I am either getting the best dental service in the world, or I am living in a world of delusion.

“Did you ever work with another dentist, or have you always been a sole practitioner?” I asked him.

“Yes, I tried working with other dentists,, but it just never works out,” he told me.

He always has jazz and blues playing on a stereo in his office, and he had a large painting of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (with Roy holding a guitar) on his dental chair room, as well as an actual guitar hanging in the same room.

“Do you play the guitar?” I asked.

“Yes, but as my arthritis has gotten worse, I can’t play much any more.” I wondered a bit as his handling of dental tools seems deft enough, but I decided not to worry about it until a drill slips enough to make me scream.

“Did you ever consider music as a career?” I asked him. He said he enjoyed playing music, but the dedication necessary to be professionally successful took all the enjoyment out of it. (This is a bit similar about RG’s Mommy’s comment about her reasons for abandoning her one-time goal of being a concert violinist.)

One time he told me, “The first year I worked as a dentist, I joined another dentist in Alaska. The oil drilling and pipeline construction was at its peak. We worked 12 hours a day and charged whatever we wanted. Boy, I made a lot of money. However, when winter came I had never been so cold in my life, so I left Alaska at the end of that winter. There was no way any amount of money would compensate for being that cold.”

I could identify. One of the six high schools I attended was in Wisconsin, and I still remember waiting for the school bus when the temperature was -38 degrees. I swore once I became an adult, I would not live some place that got that cold.

“How did you decide to become a dentist?” I once asked him.

“When I was in college, I couldn’t get the classes I wanted. I noticed if you were in pre-med or pre-dental, you got to the top of the list when it came to getting classes, so I told the university I was planning to become a dentist. After a while, I actually applied for the dental school, and, to my surprise, they accepted me.”

I told Frank how a friend of mine once related the following anecdote to me.

My friend said, “My dentist was working on me and suddenly exclaimed, ‘When I think about the 18-year-old kid who made this career choice, I could kill that kid now.’”

Frank chuckled but indicated that dentistry wasn’t that painful for him.

He mentioned a wife once, so I asked, “Do you have any children?” He immediately answer in a manner that mixed a charming combination of determination, strong opinion, self-awareness, and cheerful geniality, “God No! I hate kids!”

I said his exclamation reminded me of comments by W. C. Fields such as:

Children should neither be seen or heard from – ever again.

I never met a kid I liked.

I like children – fried.

I began to put together a portrait of a person who had arranged his life fairly quite well to suit himself but cheerfully makes adjustments as he has to.

His final comment to me was, “Pretty soon every doctor and every dentist will be working for the government; it’s inevitable. Fortunately, it will be too late to get me.”

 

City Dentist, Country Dentist

I went to my dentist a few weeks ago, reminding myself I have been meaning to write a few blog posts about dentists I have known.

At one time, my wife and I used a dentist named “Dr. Nixon.” Actually, President Richard Nixon had a brother who was a dentist, but I am pretty sure our dentist was not that Nixon. After we moved to Oregon for a while, we ended up with a dentist in Beaverton, Oregon who told us that Dr. Nixon did terrible work.

When we moved to the Hawthorne Blvd area of Portland, east of the Willamette River (which divides the city in two), our Beaverton dentist referred me to a female dentist a few blocks from our new home. It was the first female dentist I ever had, and I loved the experience. I don’t like going to the dentist any more than anyone else, but having a woman as my dentist gave me a comforting feeling of Mother, take care of me as I leaned back in the chair and submitted to the drill.

When we moved back to Washington, my daughter recommended a dentist she and Mommy (her partner) used in downtown Seattle. “Oh, I should mention, he’s gay,” she mentioned, though that was not a concern to me one way or another. Our Seattle dentist operated a large busy office with another [gay] dentist high up in a medical office building.

These dentists were very high-tech and attentive to detail in regard to patient comfort and safety. I was given my own personal mask to bring in for nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”) so my mask would never be contaminated by contact with another face. In the waiting area, a rack held several hundred music CDs. Patients chose a disk to provide music piped into earphones while the dentist worked.

I am fairly certain that every hygienist , assistant, and receptionist was also gay. I will indulge in the stereotype of saying this office has a certain atmosphere and elegance one is unlikely to find in the average dental office.

That was my “city” dentist. In my next post, I will describe the “country” dentist I now have on the island.

V3 Hits a Do Not Pass Go; Do Not Collect $200 Bump in the Road

Usually, V3 is chipper and upbeat (without being so positive and idealistic as to ruin my usual grimly cheerful cynicism. However, one day I found her is a very discouraged, melancholy state of mind.

I inquired about the cause of her distress.

She told me she was in her first semester of graduate school and having a terrible time in one of her classes. She felt like she wasn’t understanding any of her assignments; the professor was constantly criticizing and demeaning her work; in general, she wasn’t sure she was going to “make it” in terms of her dream of becoming a librarian.

I gave her a little pep talk, telling her that I had a similar experience when I started graduate school I also told her that quite a few professors get their main pleasure in life by destroying vulnerable and insecure students.

“Every truckload of apples is bound to encounter a rotten barrel now and then,” I told her. “Also, it takes a while to learn how to spin whatever style of bullshit is in vogue at the present time. Not everybody learns to wade through the muck successfully right away. And though they try to keep it a secret, there are a few decent professors as well. My suggestion is to just do your best this semester and give yourself a chance. If the next semester is as bad, maybe it is time to drop out or commit suicide or some such radical action. However, I suggest you keep plugging ahead for at least your fist year and see if things get better. You strike me as an intelligent and competent person; you’re obviously doing well here at the library; don’t give up on yourself yet.”

Apparently, I bucked her up enough with my pep talk; she promised not to give up until she was into her second semester.

I didn’t see her again until she had completed her first year. She was ebullient and cheerful again and told me she was doing fine in school. She also indicated my pep talk had helped her get through her difficult first sememster.

She graduated, was promoted to a good position, and worked at a distant branch in the mountains for a year or two. Every report I had indicated she was doing fine. The library system (like community colleges) employs a lot of half time people.

For some people, who need a full time income, the library system’s penchant for using part time workers is very exploitative and stressful. For others, with enough income from a spouse to not need a full time job, or desperately trying to lose weight (so they can benefit from starving for a while), they are able to survive a job and a work environment that might be toxic if full time. V3 fell into this fortunate group. However, the last time I saw her provided a piquant twist that lives fondly in my memory, as I will relate in the final episode of this series.

Introducing the Third Va-Va-Voom Sister

Random Granddaughter is back on her own again, by now probably running marathons, playing Rachmaninoff piano concertos, and organizing her kindergarten class to overthrow the government. While she occupies herself with these trivial pursuits, I will return to my tale of the Va-Va-Voom sisters.

Before I proceed on to talking about V2’s younger sister, V3, I have to add one footnote, related to my example of memoirs having to do with breast cancer..

Shortly before I retired, I learned from V3 that her sister had come down with breast cancer. The last report I received, from V2 herself, was that her mastectomy had gone well and that she was doing fine. I have not been in touch with either sister since I retired. I should check on her. Also, I am reading a memoir by an undercover cop in Arizona who pretended to be a contract killer so he could forestall people with murder on their minds. It’s a pretty good book, and it should be right down V2’s alley.

While I was working with V2 and helping her find memoirs, she mentioned that her younger sister loved libraries and dreamed of being a librarian.

One day, as I was working at the largest library in the system, V3 introduced herself to me. Unlike her rather wan, waif-like sister, V3 is an attractive, vigorous woman with a positive upbeat manner. Although by the time I met her, I had become rather disillusioned with the library system, V3 took to it like a duck to water.

One of the problems I had with the system was that internally it operates rather like the British class system, or like a military organization. At the bottom, you have pages/privates, who shelve materials and are not allowed to talk with customers [patrons]. Next, you have assistants/non-commissioned officers, who check material in and out and wait on the public. Then you move up to the librarians, who are like the minor aristocracy/officers. The librarians have Masters degrees in Library Science. At the top of the organization, you find the dukes/duchesses, counts, earls/generals/admirals. The Director of the Library is equivalent to a King/Queen/Commander in Chief.

As most people who work in libraries are very liberal and politically correct, and are for the most part female, my analogies offend them quite a bit, though a few rogues and rascals would admit to me off the record, “Of course; that’s exactly the way we function internally.”

However, V3 moved quickly up the ladder without losing her pleasant demeanor and lively sense of humor.

I gradually learned: she is married to a man who works in something to do with intellectual properlty rights to cartoons. I never met her husband, but my impression is that it is a very happy marriage. She told me that they have no intention of having children.

As she already had an undergraduate degree, she entered the librarianship program as a graduate student at the university. Occasionally in my life I am by chance able to do someone a good deed at just the right moment; perhaps there is a minor gene for fairy godmother in my genetic makeup. Happily, the wand worked once again in the case of V3, as I shall describe in the next episode.

Part 4: Pay Dirt on Publisher’s Row

Toward the end of the time we worked together, I hit pay dirt. I introduced her to Publisher’s Weekly, a magazine mainly intended for booksellers. It contains capsule reviews of most of the books about to come on the market. V3 immediately subscribed and began scanning each new issue for the type of book she loves. When something sounds good she is the first to puts a hold on it at the library. If it sounds especially good to her, she buys a copy from Amazon.

Part 3: Don’t Tell Me What to Read!

V2 had consulted librarians for help. As with me, it took her a while to explain exactly what she wanted. Although librarians at the system where I worked are very polite and very helpful, I suspect eyebrows crept up. I on the other hand, not being a normal person, not being married to a normal person, not being the father of a normal person, not being the grandfather of a normal person, or for that matter not having any relatives who could be remotely described as “normal,” am quite good at keeping my eyebrows way down when peculiar people convey eccentric requests to me.

At some point, after trying to help her, librarians would inevitably ask her some variation of, “Have you considered reading something else besides memoirs?” I know nothing about V2’s food tastes (which are probably perfectly normal), but this was something like asking a vampire (which I am pretty sure she is probably not) “Have you considered any source of sustenance besides drinking blood?”

[If I ever meet a REAL vampire, on the other hand, I will probably suggest they read the splendid novel Some of Your Blood by the great science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon.]

Anyway, I began to find books for V2 and suggest some search strategies for discovering the kind of material she likes. I never once suggested she consider reading anything different than what she likes to read, and as a result she sort of fell in love with me, platonically. She seemed to have enough money to live on and to buy books, though she did not strike me as wealthy but she never said anything indicating she had a job. She never said anything to indicate she had a significant other in her life; I asked no questions. Once, when we were talking about a book she dropped some hints about being an alcoholic at one time and going through a recovery program such as Alcoholics Anonymous. I asked no questions as she seemed to be functioning fine.

Although I never made any comments about the sensationalism of her reading matter, she started to sound a little embarrassed about it. At one point, she indicated that she had stopped reading the most gruesome and morbid memoirs she came across. Perhaps she was growing up a little bit. I am 65 and still growing up.

Part 2: The Sister Who Only Reads Memoirs

he first Va-Va-Voom Sister I met was V2, the middle child. I don’t know if anybody remembers Keane paintings from the 70s: portraits of sad, doe-eyed waifs. That’s how V2 struck me when she attended one of my “How to Search the Internet” classes. Slight, pretty in a plaintive way.

However, her reason for seeking help was so eccentric and peculiar I could not avoid falling in love with her (platonically, of course) immediately.

“The only thing I want to read are memoirs,” she told me mournfully. “I finish one in one to three days, and then I immediately want to read another.”

Although I worked for a library, I am not a librarian, and my first response was fairly stupid.

“You mean, you only want to read autobiographies, biographies told in the first person? They will be shelved under ‘B,’ where all the biographies are shelved.”

“No! I don’t want autobiographies. I want memoirs,” she insisted.

After we talked for a while I began to understand the problem.

First, by a “memoir,” she meant not just a first person autobiography (though she will only read books written in the first person); she also meant something sensational and exciting. If all the guests on shows like Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey wrote books recounting their life stories, those would be the books V2 wants to read.

I am making this example up, but as I looked for books for V2, the template in my mind ran something like this:

A perfect book for her would run something like: My father was a gang member who dealt drugs and my mother was a prostitute who turned tricks. I grew up hooked on crack cocaine and turning tricks to support my habit.

Second, not all memoirs are filed in libraries under biographies. V2 also liked to read books about people who suffered from terrible medical problems such as cancer. I will provide some examples of how a search for something for her to read her might go if I were trying to find some books by women who struggled with breast cancer.

After I found several books with a Google search I looked them up in the library catalog.

For example, here are two books by women who survived breast cancer:

Cancer Is A Bitch by Gail Konop Baker.

5 Lessons I Didn’t Learn from Breast Cancer by Shelley Lewis.

Both of these books are filed under 362 in the Dewey Decimal System, which applies to “Social Welfare Problems and Services.”

On the other hand, Saving Graces, a memoir by Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Vice Presidential Candidate and adulterer John Edwards, is filed under Biography.

Yet another book I found in my search was One-Breasted Woman by Susan Deborah King, a Presbyterian minister, a psychotherapist, a writing teacher, and a poet. “Susan made time to turn her emotions into poetry,” the publisher’s description tells us, so the book is filed under 811 (poetry).

Probably V2 would not have liked One-Breasted Woman. I don’t think she cares for poetry.

Part 1: The Va-Va-Voom Sisters

The Va-Va-Voom Sisters are three sisters who live in the Pacific Northwest, whose first names all start with the letter “V.” I have never met the oldest, V1, who lives in Idaho. Although I haven’t seen them for a while, I consider V2 and V3, whom I met in my last job, when I worked for a library system, as good friends and charmingly eccentric people.

V3, the youngest, told me that their father is an airline pilot. His dream as a dad was to teach all three of his daughters to fly. Unfortunately, they all hate flying and get airsick. I presume they all still love each other, but if you are a parent, don’t get your heart set too much on your children loving your dreams and passions. None of the Va-Va-Voom girls will go up in a plane with dad.

In several chapters, I will describe why I enjoyed knowing them so much.

Final Chapter of a Story of Late Dawning Realization

 

My sister, as with all my siblings, is very intelligent (if quite eccentric). After a slow start, she eventually went to college a couple of times, relatively late in her life. In her forties, she went to the University of Wisconsin and studied Greek Philosophy and Ancient Greek (the language) because she felt like it. Later she got a degree in Library Science (I am not sure where) and became the director of a small library in Vermont, so she could live near her daughter and her two grandchildren, where she lives now.

I suspect that if my niece and her husband lived near us, my barely extended family and my sister’s barely extended family would hit it off well. But it’s impossible to know these things for sure.

 

In any case, a few years ago, I thought again about that meeting at Beelzebub’s apartment with with his “niece” (if indeed she was a relative of his), Lucille. I had completely forgotten Lucille for many years, and had not even made a connection with what happened to my sister. (I had only met Lucille for a few minutes and at that time in my life, constantly moving from high school to high school in different states, my childish mind was in confusion and turmoil.)

Strange as it seems, it only dawned on me suddenly at the age of 60, that Beelzebub was a a serial sexual predator who preyed on young girls such as my sister. Whether Lucille really was his niece

I don’t know. Although I sensed something was wrong by Lucille’s tense, agitated manner, I was far too immature and naive to understand that she was trying to communicate, Help, I am being held prisoner by a rapist!

In retrospect, Beelzebub’s comment to 14-year-old Random about how people would not understand his “unconventional life style” now strikes me with horror.

 

Obviously, my parents had no grasp of this as well. Fairly or unfairly, I hold them responsible for what happened to my sister, However, life is very strange. In this case, a terrible event, the rape of my sister, turned into the birth and blossoming of a wonderful person, my niece J.

 

 

 

Recently, there have been several shocking news items about young woman being held prisoner for long periods of time by an older man who raped the victim over a long period of time, undetected by other people who encountered the victim but did not realize what was happening. The story I tell is slightly different, but not that much.

When I was in high school, my life was a bit in tumult, as we moved frequently and as I attended six different schools, and as I was in immature introvert. I only met Lucille for a few minutes, and forgot about her completely, until my brief encounter with her popped into my mind a few years ago.

Life is very strange. Sometimes something good emerges from something awful.

 

(There is a little more to this story, but I am not willing to put it in my blog. I will send it to a few friends by email, who usually get communication from me by tat method. If you are a reader and want to be on the list, email me at eman_modnar@yahoo.com. At the moment, I am planning to email David, woo, pandemonic, and Pete. That covers most of my regular readers, I think. If I left you out, don’t be insulted; just drop me a line.)