Dead Man's Honda

It’s Tuesday and I’m in the dentist office. Not the cozy little personal dentist office I went to as a kid, but the kind of dental office that resembles a conveyer belt. Far too white-looking teeth are on the walls everywhere. Horrifying videos about cosmetic dentistry and life-threatening gum disease flash on plasma TV screens around the dental office. I wait for my fillings thinking, “Noooo problem. I’m an old pro at this.”

Several years ago when I was living in Germany and eating more candy and chocolate (and being handed more stuffed animals than a hospitalized child) I noticed that my front left tooth—the one next to the big center teeth—was turning a slightly darker shade on one side. I figured it was all the ham hoxels and coffee or something--- but the shadow grew. With great trepidation I realized I was getting a cavity and being in the Black Forest in the middle of nowhere was not exactly conducive to a trip to the dentist. Up until the moment I went to the dentist upon my return from Germany I had never had a cavity in my life.

And then all hell broke loose. Not only did I have a cavity in that front tooth (A FRONT TOOTH?! SICK!) I had about four more. Not only did I need to get a filling in that front tooth, in order to get the filling I had to have gum surgery and root canal therapy too.

Call me crazy but the word “therapy” I thought is supposed to connote something pleasant—a healing method, perhaps. Why someone used it to describe one of the world’s worst procedures is beyond me. Both popular culture and I take the position that root canals are one of the more ghastly things to receive. When I got mine the numbing faded halfway through the procedure so I literally felt the guy removing the nerve from my tooth—and wanted to then donate my entire head to science and leave it at that.

Having endured the root canal, the stitches in my gum that made me look like I’d actually flossed with real spiders and left their legs between my teeth, and the concurrent shots and fillings, I figured Tuesday would be a breeze.

Not so.

I finally get situated in the classic recliner chair wishing I could order myself one of those lead x-ray blankets because they’re heavy and warm and lovely when something square is being shoved into the roundness of your mouth. Before I know it the doctor has started going to town on my teeth telling me I’m getting an extra filling I didn’t realize I would receive.

Hey bonus, great.

Then the mentally vacant dental hygienist entered the room and startled me with the large black ink feathers sliding across her face from her eyelids. Immediately I wished for the sunny (almost too cheery) dental hygienist from my cleaning weeks prior. That woman could have made coffee beans sprout roses. This woman might make coffee beans sprout roses but only because she cast a spell on them and then scared the bean so witless it forgot what it was and had a rose erupt from its terrified center.

Seriously.

Forgetting where my mouth was the woman jabs the straw into my face—the skin, not the oral cavity—sucking my cheek clear of any debris it might have encountered since I washed it only about a half hour before. Instead of assisting the doctor she stares absently up at yet another plasma screen watching the faux dental procedures (which I can only assume she has seen several times) fade into one another while the dentist gives me three painful shots without any assistance. Finally she realizes my epidermis doesn’t need suctioning, bends the straw into a hook, and then dangles it down into my throat and leaves it there while she chews her gum and holds her hand out with gauze in it as if the doctor might spit his gum into the wad.

As this casual approach to whatever it is she’s supposed to be doing continues, I wait while the numbing fluid runs down the back of my cheek, down into my throat—numbing everything in its path. My lower esophagus feels like it has swollen up three sizes now and with the suction tube still grasping at my now shriveled dry tongue, I think I’m going to gag.

Instead of gagging the doctor accidentally drops the drill onto my lower teeth.

HOLY CRA---

“That’ll keep you awake, eh?”

Yes, I’m thinking. That and the fact that my tongue is now safely deposited in whatever machine is attached to the end of this tube while Queen High As A Kite here continues to chew her gum and look at all the utensils you’re supposed to be using on my mouth.

In my mind I shifted from that dentist chair to the homey dental office from my childhood. My dentist is in there talking softly, making sure nothing hurts (nothing ever did), making sure that his sweet, competent dental hygienist keeps my mouth both free of old spit and hydrated with mists of cool water. Granted, each time he tried to fix the chip on my tooth it fell off.

This time, however, this chip is NOT falling off. I know this because the guy plastered so much crap on my tooth I couldn’t bite down when he was finished and blood was flowing out of my mouth.

What th? I’ve never had blood accompany a filling.

Then I saw that he must have dropped the drill on my gums too because when the swelling went down a crimson lump around my tooth remained.

After I chattered that I couldn’t bite down properly, he gave me a mirror to give him more direction. I jumped when I saw my tooth even more than when I saw the hygienists’ eyes--- where the chip had been a very real-looking filling now remained. Only it was sagging off to the right so far down it looked like the chip had not only repaired itself, but had about three children dangling from its leg.

Uh…I said with my mouth as near to useless as possible in that numbed-up state…
Could you pweeze fwatten dat out a wittle bit mo? I said as lip floundered on its own. It seemed to have taken up some form of interpretive dance.

“Oh yeah, I see what you mean,” he said.

Well thank God he isn’t blind, I thought.

Next the hygienist shoved me back down in the chair (whoa there girlfriend) and the dentist drilled away.

I can’t say any of it actually still feels like a tooth—but I can at least look as though I didn’t gnaw on the end of a steel pipe one day. And I can say it makes me appreciate the attentive dental worker in my own town—even if his work doesn’t always stay attached.

The latest problem with Honda is the hole in her exhaust pipe that is growing larger every day. That, and the brake light that won’t turn off. Of course there are the usual ailments—her banged up sides and front and the pieces of who-knows-what lying on the carpet that screams out “VACUMN ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD”. But I did dump out all of the trash. And I washed her. But I’m beginning to notice that the sound of her is causing people to stop what they’re doing and stare at the sky as if a helicopter has just passed overhead. Only a helicopter hasn’t passed overhead. Honda has passed by.

And that awkward, stilted, repulsed reaction people have toward Honda is the sort of feeling I occasionally have for women’s conferences. I don’t like that much of my own gender. It’s like feeling as though you are going to drown in estrogen or that it might suffocate you under the guise of too much perfume. Worse—it’s listening to a lot of really depressed ladies as they smack on below-average food.

This year at the conference we had a speaker who started out by saying something and adding “I was glad the Lord kept my mouth shut….” I cringed. My nose wrinkled up until my face probably looked like it was attached to an invisible string pulling it from the ceiling.

What the?

Earlier I heard another lady say, “you know, that daycare was just awful to my kids,” “well did you report them?” I asked. “No, I called but no one answered so I figured the Lord didn’t want me to address it.”

Gagging. Gagging.

At another point I heard something else along the lines of “I don’t want to be at that school but God told me I needed to be there so I am….”

You good little automaton, you.

Then the speaker said “We’re like clay, we resist whatever it is God wants to do—and he just keeps molding and molding and we say ‘no God, no!’ and he says ‘yes, I have something for you, yes.’”

Uh….sounds a little twisted to me.

By that point I’d completely shut down. It was like riding inside Honda when she jerks and jerks and you feel like you’re going to throw up--- until you just shut down and ignore that it feels like that. I finally had to ignore the language being thrown around me that was making me nauseous.

I say this because it’s done so nonchalantly. It’s so pervasive. When I asked one woman what conference she would be attending she said “Oh I don’t know, but I’m sure the Lord will have something for us when we get there,” by “us” she meant she and her one-year-old baby.

Well, yeah…buuuuut…. I fail to see….
My only reaction was a quick head tick to make sure I was still awake and not having some sort of strange seizure-like dream where everyone stopped having a mind and a will and rational capabilities.

But I wasn’t dreaming. These beautiful women--many of whom I truly do care about and admire and believe have purpose and talents and abilities far beyond their own acknowledgement—have adopted a learned helplessness in their vocabulary and their mindsets. They’ve learned to become passive to the forces around them and, like Lindsey says, have given their subconscious a name. They have elaborate conversations with “God” about what they should eat, when they should exercise, whether or not they should open their mouths about things as obviously egregious as abusive childcare workers!

And it isn’t just women. I hear it all the time from men as well. My contention is this: if God gave us wills, and decision-making capabilities, and reason--- why are those capabilities abandoned in our vocabulary and interpersonal dialogues about the one who gave them to us? I have been with people who have laid before the Father in prayer and cried out to Him to speak to them and He has been silent. So why is he silent in those moments of desperation but fully vocal to the person who asks him whether or not they should go for a jog?

From what I understand of Scripture God spoke—of course. But not with the regularity claimed by people who dismiss their own actions and place all responsibility on “God” as if they had no will or rational ability at all. The lack of ownership in the language of Believers makes me very, very, sad. It actually makes me quite ill.

Because the most telling moment of all during that conference—was that as the language of disempowerment was being shared all over the place between women--- the seminar on Depression was fully packed. Even the main speaker, mentioned above, sat in the back of that seminar.

If the language we use makes us victims to all-oppressive forces of a contrived God and ignores the deep desires, creative abilities, rational capabilities and God-given reason instilled in all of His human creation--it is no wonder that more human beings are not overwhelmed with feelings of helplessness and desperation. By that I do not mean to equate depression with simple feelings or emotions--- but I do think that there is a correlation between the amount of empowerment with which we equip believers in our language and in our sermons, and the amount of individuals who feel trapped in a system in which they are simply a cog.

I choose to ride in Honda despite her faults. I do not choose to accept the language and theology illustrated above in spite of its faults. That’s just me though…..