Arianna Georgi

          I went to the dentist this week because my mom made me an appointment.  I am 26 years old.  Let me explain.  When my mom gets something in her head (this idea being that my teeth are incredibly dirty, but previous ideas being that my carpet is filthy and should be professionally cleaned, my cat looks like it is feral, and my friends in high school were all bad influences) it is very hard to dissuade her.  She will hold on to this opinion and bring it up with the same sort of single-mindedness a bulldog has when in snaps its jaws down on a toddler.  This happens until something is done or everyone agrees with her.  A few months ago, she became obsessed with my teeth.               

“Your teeth need to be whitened” she said repeatedly, every single time she saw me. 

            “Are you saying my teeth look bad?” I asked.  I thought that taking this tactic would immediately cause my mom to withdraw in fear of damaging my fragile self-confidence.  No such luck.  

            “I just think if you are going to be going to job interviews and meeting people you should have white teeth, it looks nice when they are clean.”  This was the nicest this argument got.  It then dissolved into her pleading with me every time I got on the phone with her to get my teeth cleaned and saying things like, “You don’t want to have to wear dentures or have your teeth fall out when you are 40, right?”  I tried to ignore her, the same way I do when she goes on and on about me wearing a headset while driving because it is not safe otherwise.  Eventually she quieted down on the topic, and I assumed I had weathered the storm.

            It was just the eye of the hurricane.  After a few days of no mention of the teeth, I received an email.  “DENTAL CLEANING” was the title. 

            I made an appointment for you to get your teeth cleaned on Tuesday, April 15^th. At 4PM.    Love, MOM

April 15^th was about 3 days away.  “Mom,” I tried, on the phone, “I just started the new job.  I will have dental insurance in 2 weeks.  I will make my own appointment then…” 

            “Stop yelling at me,” my mom said.  I examined the volume level on the phone.  It was normal.   “It’s too late to cancel the appointment.” I was informed.

            The truth was, I had been avoiding a dentist appoint.  At my previous job I didn’t have dental insurance (they, apparently, were not very concerned about me having dentures at 30), and so it had been a while.  Like since 2005, a while.  It’s not so bad, I reasoned with myself while I sat in the waiting room, people got around for 1,000s of years before dentist showed up and started insisting we floss and come in annually, what could possibly be wrong?  In fact, I continued to mentally dialogue, this whole dentist thing is just a big racket.  They’re in cohots with the floss people.  It’s BS!  I bet my teeth would be just fine if I didn’t go for 10 years!!!

            My dentist stuck her head out to say “hi.”  I gave her a sheepish wave like she was an ex-boyfriend I was seeing around. 

            “What’s up?” I yelled. 

            “It’s been a while,” she said, “you look good.”  It was awkward. 

            “Uh, you look good too” I said. 

            By the time the hygienist called my name it was sort of a relief.  She studied my chart.      “It’s been a while,” I said, making small talk with her.   I was nervous and I was waiting for her to launch into a “better late than never, or a well you’re here now, it’s all going to be fine” type deal.  No such luck. 

            “It  has been a while,” she stated grimly.  “Are you scared?”  I stared at her with my mouth open which was good since she was already starting to put things in it.  I was hoping that what I was experiencing was similar to when you hike a mountain and get almost to the top and start getting passed by people coming down.  “Am I almost there?” you ask them, hoping for a little reassurance.  “Oh, it’s about 5 more miles and it is ROUGH” they exclaim.  They have been on the mountain for like 2 hours longer than you, but they are experts on how hard the mountain is since they have been to the top.  It’s an annoying phenomenon. 

            Anyway, this lady was like that, but with my teeth.  She made her way around to my side of the table and lowered the chair.  The ceiling at my dentist’s office has a picture of a giant hippo with its mouth open which I find disturbing since I recently watch a special on how hippos are really mean-spirited and kill tons of people in Africa each year. 

            “Well, you have gingivitis…, that’s to be expected,” the hygienist began poking around “who know what else we will find…”  Throughout the 30 minute cleaning she proceeded to berate my teeth until I was sure that when I looked in the mirror I would be confronted with a mouth full of brown stumps “Some decay here,” she said,  spraying water. “Now suck”  No wonder my mom wanted me to have an appointment, my teeth where horrific!  When she was finally done, she brought in the x-rays. 

            “How do they look?” I asked grimly.

            “Well, I’m no doctor, but I see a LOT of decay,” she said.  “We’ll see.”  And then she left and I sat like a death row prisoner until she came back with my dentist.  My dentist examined the x-ray.  Then she started poking around. 

            “You teeth look beautiful!” she exclaimed.  I shoot a look at the hygienist. 

            “I saw some decay on number 23, 31, and 24,” she stuttered.

            “No, they’re fine” my dentist said.  How could I have ever doubted myself?  Of course my teeth were awesome.  How could I doubt that I would have the most awesome teeth ever.  This hygienist was obviously just jealous of how great they are.  The dentist warned me to floss, which I assured her I do (I don’t), and told me to come in another few months for another cleaning (I probably won’t).  The whole thing came to 202 dollars I would not have to pay in two weeks when I have insurance.  Don’t ask me what the 2 dollars are for. 

In conclusion, I never should have doubted my teeth. 

In case anyone was curious… 

What I want in a man
 
I am not asking much really
a brain, a heart,
a liver.
Also, it may not be political correct
but between you and I
eyes, ears and nose
would be nice too.
 
I think you are also supposed to say that you would
like a sense of humor,
someone good with children
and close, but not too close, with their mom.
 
To be totally honest,
those things don’t matter too much to me
What is far more important,
is character.
 
For example,
I want a man
who will know what to do
in the event of a zombie uprising,
and when it started
he would grab a sawed off shotgun
and board up the doors.
I am sure I would be crouched under the table
or running up the stairs
or some other
equally bad idea
but my ideal man would stop me
and tell me
“we’re going to get through this
we just need to make it through the night!”
and then he would fire a shot over my shoulder
and kill a zombie I hadn’t even seen coming
and I would believe him
and it would be great. 
 
Or if we were on the Titanic
I would like the kind of man
who would demand we just cut our own lifeboat loose
and go
because I would be sitting on the deck
with the rest of the people waiting
and listening to the band play
while the ship went down.
 
It might be nice to have a mild mannered man
with a boring day job
who in the event of a crisis involving the world’s
computer systems
becomes an unlikely hero
and punches people
unbelievably well
and leads me to safety and says things like
“Man, I never should have gotten out of bed this morning”
Nice, except for the part about him being
mild-mannered to begin with.
 
In the event that I go
to a secluded cabin with some friends
and there is a serial killer on the lose
I want a man who will make it to the end.
 
I would be the girl saying how scared she was
and insisting that we all head home
right off the bat
while everyone else is drinking beers
and making out in the woods
 
and when all of our friends have been dispatched of
and we just barely manage to get the car started
and the killer run over
I want a man with the good sense to check
and make sure he is really dead
 
I guess the thing is
I am not very good in emergency situations
and I really wouldn’t fare well
in the event of a zombie uprising
or the end of the world
 
if we are going to talk about
what we want in men
why shouldn’t I list it all
why shouldn’t I start with
a brain
and end
by saying,
in a perfect world,
I want a man

that always knows the code
to deactivate
the nuclear bomb
 

I live across from a high school which as far as I can tell has no real plus side, but endless disadvantages.  Among these include the fact that I can’t really leave my house without being run down by parents dropping/picking kids up, I am constantly honked at when jogging around the neighborhood by people ten or more years younger than me, and my local CVS is constantly crowded with teenagers, lounging around and texting other teenagers who are probably also in the store.  Anyway, lately the biggest disadvantage is that when I come home I have to see two of these teenagers walking around, all in love with each other. 

                Basically, this started about two weeks ago.  Coming down my street I noticed two teenagers, some really tall girl and her dorky, slightly awkward boyfriend standing on my corner embracing.  I should mention that I come home at 3:45 in the afternoon.  This was the sort of embrace that you would normally expect to occur on ship docks before people ship out for a war, or in a romance movie when two lovers that haven’t seen each other for ten years are reunited and run across a field into each other’s arms.  It was not a 3:45pm embrace.  Crawling past them in my car, I gawked openly.  Their eyes were squinted, he was picking her slightly up of the ground.  It was ridiculous.  Maybe this is his last day of school before he goes to a juvenile detention center or something, I tried to justify, maybe they just took a pregnancy test and found out they are in the clear.  I wanted a reason that an embrace this passionate would occur less than a block from house in broad daylight.  I chalked it up to extenuating circumstances and left it at that. 

                But I saw them again the following Monday.  This time, they were walking hand and hand down the street.  The tall girl had her head thrown back in laughter.  She pretty much looked like she was laughing at the funniest thing in the world.  It was that kind of laughter.  They had their hands in each other’s back pockets.  Then I saw them again on Tuesday.  And then again on Wednesday.  On Friday they were sitting on top of the power box on the corner sharing an ice cream cone.  I don’t even know where you get an ice cream cone around here.  It was disgusting.  On the following Monday they were having some sort of play tickle fight with each other.  I was very close to throwing something from my car.

                The worst thing about these teenagers is that it doesn’t matter what time I leave, they still manage to be magically there on the corner, being in love.   I’ve tried stopping at the bank, running errands, taking alternate routes home.  I still manage to see them.   At this point I think it may be some sort of social experiment to infuriate me.  Like some eccentric billionaire arranged to quietly drive me mad by hiring two amorous teenagers to stand on my corner every single day being so crazy in love with each other that it makes me want to throw up.  They could also be ghosts or something, like in this Twighlight Zone episode I saw and vaguely remember where some lady was haunted and keep seeing some strange man on the corner waiting for the bus every single night and then when she asked about it, it turned out everyone on the bus had died in an accident or something.  Except if these kids are ghost, they are the least scary, most ridiculous daytime ghosts ever. 

                Look, I have no problem with people being in love… in theory.  I was an English major, I spent a lot of time reading about people in love doing ridiculous things, or betraying each other, or (in Jane Austen books mainly), pining silently away until someone noticed them.  The problem with these teenagers in that their love is that they look amazingly happy and it pisses me off.  I spent a lot of time in high school lying around and reading books and lamenting how much smarter and awesome I was than my peers.  Never once did I walk around eating ice cream and making out with a guy in over-sized shorts.  In fact I am 26 and I still haven’t done that.   I would like, just once, to walk by and see the girl sitting there with her arms crossed sulking while over-sized shorts boy talks to his friends, or the boy standing alone, looking forlorn and waiting for the bus.  Instead their teenage love is so blatant it’s overwhelming.  Witnessing it is the love equivalent of staring into the sun. 

I am sure some people will think I am jealous, but this isn’t really the case.  I have no desire to be a 16 year old in love and even if I did, I would never fall for a guy in over-sized shorts and I don’t really eat ice cream.  I just want those two teenager/ghost/hired to annoy my actors to do there being in love somewhere else.  Otherwise I may have to move.

This afternoon over here at work was looking pretty dull until about 10 minutes ago.  I had already watched this week’s episode of Pushing Daises on the ABC mini-player (which I am pretty sure was exclusively invented for people watching TV at work) and I had checked the weather for the weekend for about the 20th time in a row (which is boring in and of itself since I live in Southern California where “73 degrees and Sunny” could accurately describe the weather for the next 20 years).  Also, CNN.com didn’t have any headlines involving kittens saving their owners lives, sex scandals, or how chocolate can make you thin (just boring political stuff).

Fortunately, the afternoon became suddenly interesting when Maria our HR lady, who I share an office with, received a memo that we are officially NOT allowed to bring guns to work.  Now, for a long time I had wondered about whether or not my place of business would appreciate me bringing a loaded weapon in, but thanks to this memo I finally, definitively know!  Here’s what it has to say:

“Pursuant to the terms of your Lease, the landlord reserves the right to adopt rules and regulations for the office project as it deems reasonable and appropriate from time to time.”

Nice start, anti-work guns letter!  I like the fact that this letter refers to my office building as a project (that makes it sound way more high-tech, like I work for some sort of top secret spy center instead of in the basement of a building across from UTC).  Also, I like the awesome legal language. ”Pursuant” is a word I need to use more often.

“In order to enhance the safety and well-being of tenants and other occupants, it is important that firearms not be brought into the project.  Even unloaded weapons may, if observed, create the appearance of a threat and result in police intervention.  Accordingly, the following requirement shall henceforth be in effect and is adopted as a new rule in accordance with your Lease:”

Up until this point when I was first reading it I was thinking this letter was going to let me know about some new rule like “no parking in the firelanes” or something to do with window cleaning.  The weapons thing was sort of surprise.  Also surprising: the fact that this is a “new rule.”  In addition, I like that the letter goes the extra mile to let me know that it means all kinds of weapons (even unloaded ones).  This would seem to serve to prevent the following (inevitable) future conversation:

“You’re fired!  You brought a gun to work and waved it around!”

“But it was unloaded!  I thought that would be okay.”

“It created the appearance of a threat!”

I am sure there are some contexts in which people carrying a gun aren’t trying to create the “appearance of a threat” but I would think in the workplace is not one of them.

“Neither Tenant nor its employees, agents, contractors, invitees, or licensees shall bring any firearm, whether loaded or unloaded, into the Project at any time.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.”

So that’s the new rule, in bold no less!  NOBODY (even if your dad comes to take you out to lunch) can bring ANY (loaded or otherwise) weapons to work.  Although this letter is pretty funny, it’s also pretty disturbing.  In my experience, people don’t generally make rules this obvious unless someone breaks them.  For instance, I am pretty sure someone assumed common sense would tell someone “Do not drive with sunshade up” until someone did it and sued the sunshade company (resulting in me having to shake my head is disbelief every time I put it up in my car).  What necessitated us having a “Don’t bring guns to work” rule? 

Anyway, it’s scary/hillarious stuff to ponder for the next 40 minutes until I leave.