Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Ambushed in the dentist's chair as time goes by by J. G. Fabiano The nicest thing about time is telling what it is. Most normal people would probably think I'm talking about reading a clock or looking down at a wristwatch but I'm not talking about anything like that. I am talking about understanding what time really is. Webster defines time as; "a period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues to exist." When one is young he or she rarely, if ever, thinks about time. In fact, time seems to take too long but, when one gets older time becomes more valuable simply because we start to get the feeling it is running out. Time hit me right between the eyes in the most unlikely of situations recently. I was sitting in a dentist chair looking down on my winter boots while a dental hygienist prepared to clean my teeth. I noticed my boots were worn and probably not likely to survive another winter. My gaze then lifted to the window, at the gray winter landscape outside with its dirty patches of snow and barren trees and it was so unspeakably depressing it actually made me smile. Then I remembered the last time I had sat in this same dentist chair and my feet were wearing sandals and the scene outside the window was bright and sunny and green. I have been locked into the same six-month cleaning-cycle for many years now and the only difference this time was that it was the first time that I noticed time always came with me. I then looked down at my hands folded on my lap. The first thing I noticed was the skin, which used to be firm and clear but now looked like a deflated translucent bag wrapped around the infrastructure of me. My hands, which used to be uniformly tanned, had dark brown patches where there used to be only clear skin. I found myself yearning for the summer sun that would camouflage the spots until the fall, when sun weakened again and they would reappear in even greater numbers. The hygienist talked about how her wedding went well and that she and her husband were saving money for a home they could build on some land his parents had given him. She told me how they rarely went out anymore and how they had lost touch with many of their friends because they were pursuing the dream of their future. I remembered the first time she cleaned my teeth, when she talked about her boyfriend and how much she enjoyed his company and how they were planning to go away for the weekend soon.In the years ahead, if I measured time in six monthly visits to the dentist, I knew I would hear about her new home and then her hopes of starting a family. There might be a visit or two when there would be someone else cleaning my teeth and then my friendly, familiar dental hygienists would be back and I would hear about her new baby and how her husband had painted the extra room in bright colors and how they had decorated it just for their precious new son or daughter. I found myself looking down at my feet again, and my old worn-out winter boots. Then she tilted the chair backwards and I closed my eyes while my own little courier of time went to work on my teeth. As she scraped away the accumulated debris of six months I found myself thinking about the way we measured time in New England. It is easy to tell time when one lives in this part of the world. We know that around the Christmas holidays it will be cold and hopefully white. After that the months that mark the early part of the year have a tendency to go slow. The days are short and the nights are cold and long. The concept of heat and humidity is a memory and the pleasurable act of walking down the road to the beach seems alien and impossible. Winters used to be fun when we were young. Running out into the snow to throw snowballs, wearing jeans and sweatshirt, made perfect sense. Then time took that innocence away, along with the thickness of our blood, and we wouldn't dream of going out into the winter until we had three or four layers of clothes to keep ourselves warm. Spring is a time for a young man's heart to fly. The days are warm and the air alive with promise, the nights a time for seeking out the exciting company of the opposite sex. Somewhere out there is our soul mate and we know there is no time to be lost. To the older man, spring is a time for gardening, for turning the soil, sowing the contents of seed packets and keeping an eye on the lawn. Spring becomes summer and a time when young people can't wait to get out of their clothes and onto the beach. For the older man it is a time for seeking out looser fitting summer shirts, broad brimmed hats, and for finding a quiet, shady spot somewhere with a good book. For the young, autumn is a time of festivals and parties and glorious color and for looking ahead to college life and the adventures beyond. For those of us who are older it is a time of silent misgivings as we watch all those dead leaves fall from the trees. There was a time when we thought we owned time but now, we know, time owns us. Coming home from the dentist I felt as though I was driving in a fog. I could ignore it no longer; the burden of time was weighing me down. As I pulled into the driveway of my home I noticed the jams looked as though they needed to be repainted. New England winters have the tendency to shorten the expected life span of any paint. Surely it was only yesterday that I had repainted them? I forced myself to count backwards and realized that it had been four years ago. Four years gone by, it seemed, in an instant. It might be human to lose track of time at this age, I thought, but was it wise? My wife met me at the door and asked me if everything was okay and I realized I must have looked a bit gloomy. Sure, I said. I was fine for a man who had just discovered the meaning of time. My whole life I had been afraid of going to the dentist, but now I had found something else I was more afraid of. I just wished it had left me alone a little bit longer. The End
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