One of those things is that I left the admittedly fascinating world of tea cafes to instead pursue a career in the even more fascinating field of dentistry.

No, no… oh, yeah, no, I did it to pursue better pay and better hours, albeit less tasty job perks.

I’m not a dentist, of course, not that I couldn’t be if I tried.  ;)  I’m a dental assistant.  I have been for weeks now, maybe even a whole month.  And two days ago, I did a root canal on a little five year-old boy.

Well, I assisted the root canal.

The little five year old boy in question was actually a twin.  We’ll call him Clive, because that was his name and there’s no way any name I make up would be better than that for this story.  Little five year-old Clive and his little five year-old twin brother both had cavities, both on the same tooth.  Twins.  Always have to be matching.  The twin was in the care of Bea, the other dental assistant at this practice, and little Clive was in my care.

The procedure was to go like this.   Dentist numbs little twin’s mouth.  Dentist numbs little Clive’s mouth.  Dentist fixes up little twin’s little cavity.  Dentist fixes up little Clive’s little cavity.  Little Clive and his little twin get little souvenir toothbrushes, everyone goes home happy and watches Curious George: The Movie, which was on at four, apparently.

Except, little Clive’s little cavity was actually not very little.  In fact, for what a little tooth it was, the cavity was huge.  Poor little Clive.

But let me back up.  Clive and I are sitting in the back room, with his brother down the hall in the front room, and his brother is getting his mouth numbed.  Clive is climbing all over the seat, telling me about summer camp, about school, about his pet cat, about how he got that scab on his knee.  Clive is a very chatty young man, and not a bad conversationalist either.  Clive is also very easily amused by the little thing that shoots water into the bowl you spit in, since I’ve convinced him that it’s magic by flipping the on/off switch when he’s not looking.  Clive giggles and giggles and looks so amazed every time the water comes on.  Magic!

Then the dentist comes in and it’s time to numb little Clive’s mouth.  All of a sudden he’s a bucket of tears.  He scoots himself all the way up to the top of the dentist chair, like maybe he can escape through the ceiling, as the dentist trys to calmly but firmly get him to open his little mouth so he can apply  the topical anesthetic so he won’t even feel the needle on the novacaine.  Little Clive cries and cries, and I hold his hand so he’ll stop grabbing at the dentist’s hand in his mouth.  He squeezes it.  The dentist asks, “does that hurt?” Little Clive shakes his head.  ”You’re just scared?” the dentist asks.  Little Clive nods.  ”That’s ok,” the dentist says, “you’re being very brave and we’re almost done.”  As soon as the needle is out of his mouth, little Clive looks around bewilderedly and starts telling me about the stuffed gorilla that he got for his birthday one month ago.  It’s big, though not as big as a real gorilla.

The dentist leaves to go start working on Clive’s brother’s cavity, and Clive and I get back to our discussion of the scab on his knee and other related topics, like the bruise on his arm.  He is a five year-old boy, and this is summer, after all.  He’s still climbing around the chair, but less like he’s trying to escape and more like he’s training for the circus.  Down the hall, we hear Clive’s brother crying.

Clive looks at me.  ”He’s crying,” Clive says.

I nod.

“I can cry too!” he declares, and commences on a fake wail that sounds all too much like his “I’m scared of novacaine” wail we’d heard just a few minutes earlier.

“I don’t think that’s going to help your brother feel better,” I say, and Clive smiles, apparently less concerned with empowering his brother during this difficult time and more impressed with his own fake crying abilities.  He lets out a few more wails.

“Clive,” I say, “they’re going to think something’s wrong with you and come running to see you, and they’ll have to leave your brother in the middle of his filling.  That’s not a very nice thing to do to your brother, if nothing’s really wrong.”

Clive smiles again.  And wails again.

It’s not my favorite part of the day.

At this point, I decide to tell Clive a story.  I start by saying, “Clive, have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?”

Clive stops wailing and looks at me.  A story.  ”No!” he says. “Tell me!”

So I start to tell him, and from the get-go, from the opening line about  a shepherd in some made up fable who has to protect a flock from wolves, I begin to wonder about this wisdom of this decision.  What does little Clive know about sheep and wolves?  What the heck does little Clive care?  But Clive listens attentively.

When we get to the end, when there really is a wolf and the boy cries it, and nobody believes him and nobody comes, Clive looked at me, wide-eyed.  ”What happened?!?!”

I shrug.  ”He had fight the wolf himself.”

Clive looked at me still: “AND?!?!”

At this point, I fully regret my boy-who-cried-wolf story decision.  Since when have I become so moralistic? Since when have I believed in motivating good behavior in children by scaring them?  Since when have relished the told-you-so of “teaching them a lesson”??  This isn’t me.  I looked at little Clive, his little lip a little puffy from the novacaine.

“The boy got fired from being a shepherd.” I said.

“He DID?!?!” Clive asked.

“Yep,” I said, looking off out the window, wishing the story were over.  ”And he had to get a new job, and it was in the trash department.”

“He had to make GARBAGE?!?!” little Clive asked.

“No,” I clarify, “he had to clean up garbage.  It was totally gross.”

“Eeewwww,” Clive says, smiling.  ”That was a good story.  Tell me another.”  He had obviously missed any connection between my story and his current situation, and for that, I was glad.

“No,” I said, “you tell me one.”

So he did, and we went back and forth, until we quit noticing whether his brother was crying and the dentist came in to fix up his cavity.  It was then that we discovered that little Clive’s little cavity was so huge that it went all the way down to his nerve.  Little Clive, with horror on his face, squeezed my hand as the dentist drilled away big chunks of his little tooth.  He couldn’t cry because of how his mouth was propped open and blocked with a rubber dam.  My only consolation was that he wasn’t lying there thinking, she told me so…

The procedure went quickly enough, and little Clive was on his way, though he’ll be back in two weeks so we can finish things up.  I suggested that next time, he bring his stuffed gorilla along with him to hold while he’s getting his teeth fixed.  He smiled and gave me a hug.  Little Clive and his little teeth.

This was a good idea. 

Molly’s Cupcakes

2536 N Clark St, Chicago IL 

Get the peanut butter nutella.  Or anything.

And there’s a sprinkle bar.

Do it do it do it.

Could it be that Mac and Shana just don’t really like or value anyone enough, even in a kind of goofy way, to spend a couple minutes awarding them an imaginary gold star?  What selfish, insular people!  Keeping all those imaginary gold stars for themselves!  

Of course, this is not the case, as we hope you understand.  I think everyone here agrees that imaginary gold stars only bring you joy when you give them away.  

Neither has it been a problem of having no one in our lives that we like or value; in fact, the problem is quite the opposite!  We think and we think and we just can’t decide!

Gold stars to Megan the wedding cake goddess, for the dreamily delicious cake testing all day Saturday? 

Gold stars to everyone who’s helped Megan test cake over the past few weeks?

Gold stars to Thia for being so happy to host us in DC and because it was so good to see her? 

Gold stars to Jill for changing her flight back to Austin so she could hang out with us?

Gold stars to Catherine, Amanda, and other Bonnies, because they wanted to hang out with us and we couldn’t and we feel bad?

Gold stars to Southwest airlines, for having such cheap flights in and out of Midway? 

Gold stars to Rohn and Ammy for not destroying the house while we were gone? 

Gold stars to Mike Ditka, for being so manly?

Gold stars to my boss at work for finally giving me a enough hours so now I won’t be kicked off the health insurance? :-\

Gold stars to my health insurance?  To health insurance in general?  To health?  Ahh!  How can you give an imaginary gold star to “health”?? 

Gold stars to whomever we forgot?  Are you offended?  Oh no!!!

You see, this week, things have gotten out of control. They say that failure to make a decision is a decision in itself, and it seems that they have hit the nail on the head this week.  I guess that makes Mac and me the nails.  Mac has actually recommended just giving a black star to ourselves for the crappy job we’ve been doing with gold stars.  

But no, let the madness stop!  There’s enough depressing news out there, no one wants to hear that on top of it all, Mac and Shana were paralyzed with to hand out any imaginary gold stars this week.  And so we’ve made a decision, and the winner is: 

Threadless, for having a $5 t-shirt sale.  Mac got us each a shirt, just for fun and to make us smile – mine says “being vague is almost as much fun as doing this other thing…” and it’s yellow, and Mac’s is a picture of a cop holding hands with a donut with sprinkles and a cup of coffee, and it says “Crime Sucks.”  

The t-shirts have made us both very happy, in an “it’s the little things” sort of way.  With this in mind, I encourage you all to consider stimulating this depressing economy by spending up to $5 on something little that makes you smile and laugh.  A stack of post-it notes shaped by the first letter of your first name?  A Reese’s peanut butter cup?  Bubbles?   Sleeping in?  That’s free!

And if you feel like it, let us know what you got.  We love love comments.  :)