Right now I'm at the Best Western in North Salt Lake (read: Woods Cross). Tonight we're going to my niece's soccer game, and then a bunch of us are going out to dinner. I'm really hoping to go to McGrath's FishHouse. I'm in a seafood mood, and that sounds really good to me.
Tomorrow I'll get on the plane to go to London, and we'll see what happens from there. I still am having problems with my federal loan, but the private loan came through, and that should get me by for at least a week or two. It's not enough to cover all of my tuition, though, and I'll have to talk to financial advisor to make sure I'm all right.
During this week I had several interesting events. I went to the dentist on Monday for a checkup and cleaning, and they informed me that I had two, possibly three cavities. On opposite sides of my mouth. So they made an appointment for me the next day.
Later on Monday afternoon, I took the car (aka Bessie) to run several errands. Among other things I was able to vote. I went in to register to vote by absentee, and they told me I could just vote then if I wanted to. So I did. Then, just a few minutes later, I got into my first real car accident, the kind where I did damage to the car, I was at fault, and I got a traffic ticket (also the first ever).
The accident
In movies, they always show car accidents and things like that happening in slow motion. But that’s not the way it happened in my mind. I suppose they it that way in the movies so that you can see all the myriad of things that go on in 10 seconds or less. But nonetheless, I don’t remember it like that. Although I remember most all of the details, they are a quick blur—as quick in my memory as they happened in real life.
I had gotten into the section of one-way cross streets in downtown Idaho Falls, and I had somehow ended up in a corner I was unfamiliar with. When I finally had the choice to go right or left, I chose right—after all, that was ultimately the direction I wanted to end up in. Right, however, turned out to be a dead end with a cul-de-sac. So I turned the car around and headed back the other way again. I passed a policeman on the side of the street, who appeared to have stopped a speeding car, and then turned left onto the next available street. “If I’m going to get to 17th street,” I thought, “I’m going to have to turn left on the next street—oh, but that one only goes right. So I guess I’ll have to turn on the next street.”
It was right about then that I started through a new intersection. And a split second later, I saw the pickup truck coming along the street from my left.
At first, I slammed on the brake. But luckily the human mind works far better than most of us like to think it does, especially in a crisis. Before I had even had time to think, I hit the gas again, trying to get past the truck before it could hit me. I felt the pickup hit the car somewhere behind me, felt the car fishtailing through the last foot of the intersection, saw the sidewalk looming up in front of me, felt my foot slam on the brakes as the front tires rammed up over the curb, just a few feet from a rusty yellow fire hydrant.
I sat for a moment with the car still on, trying to wrap my mind around everything that had just happened. Then I turned off the ignition—and sat for another moment or two. Finally I got out of the car to see the pickup truck driver walking toward me from his vehicle. He was in his forties, maybe early fifties, with a kindly face worn with years of work, and a thick mustache. “Are you all right?” he asked promptly.
“Yes,” I replied, “just a little shaken, and upset with myself.
“Well, it’s OK. Just take a deep breath, things happen,” the man responded. I thought, “Well, at least he’s taking it well.”
It was a strange accident, I later reflected while trying to explain it to numerous people, because he had hit me, but I was at fault. Fortunately, the policeman from the other street came right over before we had to call him. The pickup driver, whose name I later learned was Bert Dieterle[*], had gone to try and find some witnesses when the officer arrived. He was youngish, with sandy hair, blue eyes, and a friendly manner. The officer asked me a few routine questions to establish what had happened, then asked me to take the car and park it alongside the sidewalk (as opposed to on it), and went to talk to Mr. Dieterle. Before I moved the car, a vagrant-looking man on the other corner of the intersection motioned to me. I stepped closer, watching him point to the street right in front of him, and heard him say that my license plate had come off. After letting this register in my brain, I picked up the plate and walked back toward the car, glancing at the back license plate while I was there. “It must have come off the front,” I thought. I threw the plate in the backseat of my parents’ car, and moved the car to park it off the street.
When I had gotten the car decently parked—which was more difficult than it usually is for me, given the shaken-up state of my nerves—I got back out and walked toward the officer’s car, which he had parked about 20 feet behind mine. While waiting for him to make his next move, I walked to the front of the car to see how the license plate had come off, but it was still there. “Oh,” I thought, “I suppose it must have come off of the back.” I walked back toward the officer’s car again, glancing at the back of my own car to look at the license plate—which was still attached. I barely had time to register that thought, when the officer came back over to speak to me.
“Could I see your license?” he asked.
I looked at the rear license plate again, and was about to give him the plate number, when my brain turned on. “No, you idiot!” it said. “He wants your driver’s license!” I pulled it out of my new green leather wallet, feeling a little foolish and hoping that no one would think I was just a dumb girl. The officer then asked for my registration. Luckily, my brain was still on at this point, so I promptly got the registration and insurance card from the jockey box. The officer took these and then said, “You can go ahead and sit in the car. I’m going to cite you for failing to yield—that’s the least amount of damage I can do to your life.” I smiled faintly and thanked him, then sat back down in the car, facing the sidewalk.
The waiting seemed like ages. “I’d probably better call Travis,” I thought. Travis is also lovingly known as My Brother The Chiropractor, and I supposed that I would probably have some spinal problems after having been thrown around like that. Around then, my brain switched to standby again, and I sat looking blankly in front of me, not really registering what was there. After a few minutes of this, I forced myself to think again, think about anything, anything except that accident and all the things I could have done to prevent it.
The house in front of my was a two-storey, with peeling white paint on the wood and bright blue door in the right-hand corner. The brick walls running parallel to the sidewalk were of varying heights, and what had once presumably been a garden was now run over with weeds and dead and dying plants. The lawn was mostly green with patches of brown here and there, but there were dandelions sprinkled in with this, some blooming and some gone to seed. A crumpled McDonald’s bag lay on the lawn a few feet away from the bright blue door. Grass, crab-grass, and morning glories ran several inches onto the sidewalk. Peeling white pillars ran from the ground to the second storey in front of the house, forming a quaint-looking porch.
Finally, the officer came back again with my documents. “Do you live in Idaho now?” he asked, holding out my Utah driver’s license.
“Yes—well, kind of.” I wasn’t sure how best to answer that question. “I’m only here for a few weeks before leaving for England.”
“Oh, what are you going in England?” he asked conversationally.
“Going to graduate school.”
“Oh, really? What school?”
“University of Lancaster.”
“Well, that sounds neat.” He held out another small white paper to me. “This is the other guy’s information,” he explained. “He doesn’t have his insurance information with him, so I put him down as ‘uninsured’, but he’s on the phone with his insurance company right now. He just switched providers and doesn’t have a new card yet, but he’ll be sure and contact you with his information.” I took the paper from him and set it on the passenger seat with the other documents. The officer held out another piece of paper to me. “I’ve cited you for failure to yield at an intersection controlled by a flashing red light. The fine for that is $53, and you need to pay that within 14 days from now.”
“Can I pay you right now?” I asked, taking the paper.
“No, you can’t pay me,” he explained. “If you want to pay it right now, you have to go down to the courthouse and pay it there.”
I nodded to show my understanding.
“You can go ahead and go if you want to,” the officer continued, “I don’t need anything else from you.”
I put all my papers away—license in my wallet, Mr. Dieterle’s info and the traffic ticket in my purse, the registration and insurance card in the jockey box. I thought I’d get out quickly to make sure they knew that I was leaving. Mr. Dieterle came over then, looking all around at the car. “Before you go,” he said, glancing in my front seat, “I lost my rear license plate, I just wondered if it ended up over here somewhere.”
My brain switched back into full mode again. “Oh, this must be yours, then.” I opened the back door and pulled out the license plate. It all finally made sense. I gave him the plate and bid him and the officer good-bye.
Later, after paying my ticket and gathering my wits a little more closely around me, I found myself going 10 mph under the speed limit on a main road. It’s funny how an accident will do things like that to you. I made my way out to Target, where I called my mom to let her know what had happened, in case Mr. Dieterle tried to call them there. Then I bought some new earrings and a KitKat, and life seemed much better again. I was still upset, but fashion and chocolate always do their share to cheer me up.
Well, after that whole thing happened, I had my dentist's appointment on Tuesday for my fillings. They ended up doing four fillings in all, and they were on both sides of my mouth, so my whole lower mouth was numbed out. It was an interesting time ...
Four Fillings
I counted backwards from 99 in German to keep my mind off of the imminent pain of the anesthetic. The only trouble was, I started so early that I was already down to about 35 before Dr. Jacobsen had even applied the local anesthetic. So, I calmed down a little, waited for a moment, and then started again. He poked me at least 4 times in each side. Interestingly enough, the right side hurt more when he injected the anesthetic, but the left side was worse during the actual work.
After anesthetizing me, the dentist and the assistant both left for a few minutes, and I concentrated on the oldies music that was being pumped through the sound system. After a short time, they came back, but they tried actually making conversation. My lip feels like a big, oversized, shapeless blob, and they want me to talk to them?
“So how’s the weather out there?” the assistant asked.
“Mrtyns,” I answered, meaning, “Pretty nice.”
“How does that feel?” the dentist asked when he returned a moment later.
“Nmm,” I replied, by which I meant, “Numb.” He seemed to understand this.
As they prepared the tools, the dentist informed the assistant that I was going to England for school.
“Really?” she said. “What part of England?” She didn’t even pause for an answer before she went on, “Oh, you can’t answer that, huh? My brother served his mission in England. He was in Leeds.”
I was torn between wishing that I could tell her I’d applied to Leeds and was attending school not far from there in Lancaster, or wishing that she would stop trying to ask me questions that weren’t yes-or-no.
They started drilling. “So what are you studying in England?” she asked again. Bits of my tooth are flying out and hitting me in the face, and she’s still trying to converse.
After a while, they stopped trying to talk with me, and just talked to each other instead.
“Did you know that London Bridge is actually in a little town in Arizona now?” the dentist asked.
“Really?” the assistant asked interestedly.
“Yeah. It was built in London in the 1800s, but it was just made for foot traffic and horse carriages, and when the automobile traffic started getting heavier, the bridge couldn’t support it any more. So they held this auction, and some little town in Arizona bought the bridge for—like, I don’t know, two million dollars—and they took it down and put it up in their little town. And now they have all this English touristy stuff there. My wife and I went down there a few years ago.”
“That is so interesting,” the assistant said.
At this point, I started thinking maybe I should have had the laughing gas after all.
They kept clamping my mouth open, and before too long, my jaw started feeling very sore. The right side seemed to go just fine. They started there, so my jaw wasn’t sore yet, and everything seemed to go pretty fast. On the left side, they found that the cavity had begun to spread forward to the next tooth, so they had to do another filling. Then, after they were all done, he tried flossing between those two teeth, and found that the contact was too big. So they had to re-do that, which took another 15 minutes and made my jaw that much more sore.
Lying there, I thought about how I would write out a note for the receptionist, since I would undoubtedly be unable to speak. “Could you please call my parents and tell them I’m done? They will pay. Curt or LaVern Wilkins, 523-9202.” Luckily, however, I found that I was still able to talk moderately well. Besides which, though, my mother had stopped off and left a signed check for me to fill out when I was done.
I literally (and I do mean literally, Paul J) could not feel the bottom half of my mouth and the front of my tongue for about two hours afterward. My jaw is still amazingly sore—worse than I’ve ever felt it before. I suppose that’s part of the reason why they don’t usually do fillings on both sides of the mouth at the same time, but what else could I do? I’m almost convinced that I don’t want to open my mouth completely for the rest of my life.
So ... it's been interesting. Hope you're all doing better than I am! More later.
1 comment:
Wow! An exciting week! I'm glad that you are okay. I'm sure you won't read this until you are in the UK, so hope you had a great trip. Keep us informed.
BTW, I laughed through your whole post. Thanks!!
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