teething a set of steel nails behind the permanent pearls

When I was five or six, a milestone was passed with the snap of the last fiber of gum tissue holding an incisor in place. The little chip of enamel was enthralling, and the black notch it left in my face was something of status.

Today, another milestone was passed with my dentist's utterance of the word 'extraction.' He spoke of a tooth, numbered 31, that has gone seriously south. The x-ray scans detailed the mess I'd neglected since first feeling a twinge of unrest nearly a year ago. On the monitor was a conspicuous scene that showed a bulbous cavern of dark gray within a molar and further discoloration below its roots.

My options were limited. On Uncle Sam's insurance plan, I could have paid for the work with the cash I had on me. That is, because I chose to decline any fancy reparations. The decision to let the man go ahead and wrench it out of my head didn't come immediately. This is my mouth's first casualty (except for one wisdom tooth, but really, they're born in limbo), so naturally I underwent a number of coping stages there in the vinyl recliner.

It didn't seem it could be as simple as to 'extract' the hollow beast without some sort of compensation for its absence. This all sounded like preparation for a full set of falsies. I inquired about a bridge. Apparently this is not a complusory operation following tooth removal, but as the price told, it is a luxury.

Then the last stage hit. To reminisce for some background, I was asked several months ago if I felt I woke up one morning and found that I was an adult. I agreed I had at the time, but upon further introspection, it's more like I'm drifting in and out of wakefulness to this fact. To put it metaphorically, it's like I'm fighting to hold on to a dream state on a Sunday morning in which I'm committed to attend my own adolescent perspective's wake service.

This in mind, a dental assistant, near my age, examining the sad state of my teeth was the limo driver tapping the horn a few times outside my bedroom window. As the rotational x-ray machine whirred around my jaws, I nearly sighed at the face staring back from an inset mirror. There were no wrinkles or liver spots, and my face was spared from the death-hickeys of 1995, but a detectable matte gauze of physical maturity lay over the freckles.

Then, looking into the face of the assistant, I saw someone who could have graduated from high school in my same class. Sharpness of facial definition seems a trustworthy clue to one's age. It struck me was that she was my peer, in the workforce and in what is referred to as the real world.

Back when I was 5 or 6, a 25 year-old-looking dental assistant wouldn't have caused the bat of an eye to me. However, to the elderly woman in the next cubicle, much information and assurance was required from the young assistant. The more relative age beyond the client's age, the more perceived competence, usually up to a senior-status threshold. When the principal of an elementary school is under fire for an action, it is from parents who are peers of his or hers. The child may disagree with a school administrator's reprimand, but the authority figure's expertise in the matter is most often assumed. After all, he or she is bigger than you.

One grows and ages, each mistake is perceived as less of a lesson and more as a deliberate action. Adulthood seems to have some dire implications. I will eventually pay dues to my generation of associates, but perhaps never look upon the death of my youth. After this Friday, a permanent gap will be made in my teeth, though how I will try to bridge the one forming in time.

the elves of Red China can hear extremely low frequencies

The friend who aggressively urged me to attend the school I attend was rolling high on Ecstacy (if that is the streets' spelling) at the time of the urging and added, in a burst of sobriety, that it would be extremely hard, but that I would love it. It occured to me that the acronym of the school sounded much like "a mess of E," but I wouldn't doubt his heart, despite the goofballs. Basing it much on this Chi-town encounter and the taste for challenge it put in my mouth, I signed up. I now stand nearing the crest of my time here. Here's my snapse of the bittersweet bleaknesses and promises foreseen in the coming quarter.

Every lecture and lab I need attend this quarter meets in a tiered brick building with three stories. It's essentially a maze that might inadvertently benefit students by forcing them to plot complex three-dimensional routes through it. I've been told it takes spending years as an instructor in the building before it is mastered. I generally end up ten minutes late on a catwalk above some massive machinery on the first day of class, not quite sure of which floor I'm on. With all classes meeting in this labyrinth, it feels more than ever that education is a fulltime occupation, in a centralized job site.

Last night, in my one-hour break between my two-hour classes, I became hungry. With the cafeteria closed, and the Greek place up the street sounding like an expensive habit to begin on my first night on the 'job,' I retired to 'Lee's Lounge' in search of a sandwich of some sort. There is a framed picture of a young bearded man in the lounge, and I assume he is the Lee after which the the nook is named. Given the dedication, I doubt he's alive. Despite his bright smile, his face is a bit ominous when it's the only one in the place.

Seeing no one in the lounge, it became easy to deposit $1.30 in a vending carousel for a smoked polish sausage. Without anybody but good old Lee to witness me eat it, I wasn't locked into purchasing something from the machine with a slightly higher value of health, or less phallic shape. I often refrain from ordering extra mayonaise on sandwiches, or opt for something consisting of white meat and lettuce, if there's a pretty stranger to impress in the line behind me. Tell me no one's ever influenced themself in this way.

In the silence of the empty tables and chairs, Lee's bright stare, and the lights' florescent glare, I chewed into the microwaved polish sausage. Incising the membranous casing revealed the well-marbled meat plasma within. The bun turned to dough where I gripped it. I sipped coffee from an uncovered paper cup. The anti-romantic routine of the next 10 weeks stretched out before me, and it had beauty.

En route to the orientation for an electronic communications course, I realized I had to return to the lounge for my schedule, which I had misplaced there. Other students had taken up positions at the tables. Before spotting the yellow paper atop the microwave, I was going to ask a young lady, who was sitting at the table I had sat, if she had seen it. Upon requesting her attention, I was shot a cold, afraid look. I can only try to dispell to myself that many nights of meloncholic solitude in Lee's lounge has hardened this one.