Just Shoot Me Up With Novocaine and Walk Me To My Car!

     Okay, so I have a confession to make.

     They say the important thing is to be willing to admit you have a problem. That's the first step in getting better.

     So, here it is and it isn't pretty--I'm a crier. That's right, I said it, a crier.

     If you are sitting in a theater watching a movie that either makes you gag or laugh at how lame it is and you hear some freak sobbing into her popcorn bucket, chances are it's me. I bawled like a baby during "Mama Mia" when Meryl Streep sang "Slipping Through My Fingers" to her daughter (but at least I didn't  cry when I heard how awful Pierce Brosnan's singing voice is).

     I can't tell you how many times I've sat at home with tears streaming down my face at the end of a movie and then looked around at my family members to see dry eyes and snot-less noses. And they're all looking at me with their Mom's-a-basket-case-again faces. I ask them, "How are you not sobbing your eyes out? Are you all heartless? Have you no souls, no compassion?" and they all excuse themselves and go on with their lives as though Willy Wonka didn't just give Charlie Bucket the whole chocolate factory and invite his poor mother and grandparents to live in it with him. Unbelievable!

     It doesn't take much to choke me up--a commercial with a little kid smiling up at his/her mom, a movie with a happy/sappy ending, pictures of my girls when they were bitty things, those God-awful ads on TV with the abused dogs and cats, stories on the news about people who have given up hope, and, of course, a good book. There's nothing better than a book that has you laughing on one page and trying to read through your tears on the next. A roller-coaster ride for the soul--two thumbs up.

     Some of my crying jags have been embarrassing. Some have been downright humiliating. One in particular makes me wince every time I think about it.

     I don't like dentists. I never have and I never will. But I found a dentist who was gentle, patient, and willing to make adjustments for big old babies like me. Instead of strapping me to the chair for three hours to fix every problem he could find in my mouth, he let me come in for several short appointments instead, ones that were just short enough to end before my panic level rose to the biting his fingers stage. A couple of weeks after one of these appointments, I received a letter in the mail informing me that my dentist had passed away from a heart attack. He actually passed away a few hours after my last appointment. The letter stated that his brother would be taking over the practice and all appointments would be honored. I was sad to hear the news, but glad to hear that all his patients, including me, would still have a doctor to treat them. I checked my calendar and saw that I didn't have another appointment scheduled for six months.

     I showed up at my appointment and met the brother. He was nice and the examination went well. I stopped at the desk on my way out to make another appointment and was told there was a problem with my insurance. I wasn't worried. I knew that I was covered and it was just a matter of the right forms being sent in. The new dentist's wife was running the office and she needed some information from me to straighten the insurance tangle out. As I sat down at the little desk waiting for her to pull up my file on the computer, I turned my head and there on the bulletin board next to me was a newspaper clipping of the dentist who had passed away. In it, he was surrounded by some kids he had sponsored for some sort of sports team. A kind man who was now dead surrounded by children he had helped. That was all it took.

     My throat got lumpy. My eyes started to burn. The tears started flowing.

     The wife turned to ask me something and saw my tears. "Are you alright?" she asked, pushing a box of tissues toward me. I nodded, but couldn't speak. "Don't worry, we'll work this insurance issue out," she said. I cried harder. She panicked and went to get her husband. He left a patient and came up behind my chair. "Are you in pain," he asked, even though he had only given me an exam. I shook my head and continued to cry, thinking of this man losing his brother. "She's worried about the bill. There's a problem with her insurance," his wife told him. I shook my head again, trying to think of anything to say to get out of this. I couldn't say, "I'm crying over the dead dentist, even though you're not crying and you were his family and I'm just some random patient he saw a couple of times a year."

     So I just kept crying and not speaking. Finally, the wife said, "Why don't you just go on home and I'll give you a call if there is any more information I need for the insurance claim." By now, everyone in the office and waiting room was staring at me. I nodded, grabbed a couple more tissues and got the heck out of there. You think I dreaded going to the dentist before--it was over a year before I could make myself face those people again. The good news is, they now think I'm fragile or maybe psychotic, because they treat me with kid gloves when I go in and who doesn't want a dentist who's more afraid of you than you are of him?

     Any other blubberers out there in the blogosphere??