Jesus, the Christ,
however little we know your Gospel,
it is light in our midst.
However little we grasp your presence,
it is light for us.

We search for you, Jesus, the Christ,
sometimes with uncertain steps,
but you have already come.
You bring light into our anxiousness.
You know
we would never want to choose darkness
but always welcome your inner life.
~brother roger of taize, life from within

happy haiku friday

the cold, black onyx

worn by waves, anchored in sand

remains my teacher

do or die, part deux

bottom of 5

you know your team is in trouble when you get overly excited about an HBP. oswalt looks unhittable.

first and second, no out. i'm going to follow rick's advice and think happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts...

(marginal note: i can't believe fox just drew attention to their dumb-ass "right now!" box by playing that stupid, we substituted substance abuse for social justice song by van halen).

and it's...another blown call. everett clearly missed molina. in these instances, where the umpire has absolutely no angle on the play, he should be allowed to ask the first base umpire, who had a perfect angle on the play, for assistance. dumb-ass union monkey.

okay. 3-1 is a hell of a lot better than 3-0.

that's the stupidest comment i have ever made.

you'd think that on a day like today, when i got a promotion at lifeway, probably sold the corolla, completed a ball-busting take home exam for a seminary class and am sitting on my couch with a beer in my hand and dog at my feet, i'd be a little more optimistic. so i'm doin' it. if karma works for earl, optimism will work for me!

good at bat for eckstein. he struck out, but he made him work. little by little. little by little.

top of 6

is there anything less compelling than an in-dugout interview with tony larussa? i think he would rather eat meat than talk to thom brennaman in the midst of a tight playoff game.

why do they have to put the in-dugout microphones on idiots? earlier, brandon backe noted that "the walk from the mound is the loneliest walk in the world. i don't care if i done good or not. i hate bein' pulled." jeff bagwell is sitting in that dugout, doing nothing, and you choose to mike the likes of brandon backe? come on! (of course, this entire argument would be unnecessary if fox pinched their penchant for stupid gimmicks (i.e., scooter, right now!, diamond cam, fan cam, manager interviews, etc.), of which dugout mikes are only a part.

you can't scheme a schemer! except when you can. that squeeze was huge.

bottom of 6

okay, the gig is up. edmonds, walker and sanders cannot catch up to a 97 mile an hour fastball anymore. or a 95 mile an hour fastball for that matter. this team has some major re-tooling to do over the winter. i told rick that if we don't win this year, we won't win for 7 or 8 years. i'm not the prophet or the son of a prophet, but...

i think pitching to pujols with one out and no one on bat is foolish.

i told you i wasn't a prophet. oswalt just stole albert's milk money.

that oswalt is one cool customer. he's a consistent, understated and sane version of prior. ugh.

top of 7

i found this incredible picture of gate 5 at bush on the nyt website this morning. i found it strangely touching. it also provoked the following top 5 lists.

top five moments at busch stadium:

watching the cardinals whip the cubs to secure the 1985 national league east title

sitting five rows from the field on a beautiful sunday that also happened to be the last regular season game at busch

willie mcgee's ninth inning walk-off homer on opening day in 1997

the "brawl" that was precipitated by will clark spiking the "secret weapon" and ozzie swinging at will and hitting him in the helmet

watching the cardinals whip the padres to win the first game in the 1997 nlcs

holy shit. when it rains it pours. they're chilling champagne in the visitor's locker-room right now.

bottom five moments at busch stadium:

making vicious fun of tony gwynn throughout the aforementioned game and laughing when somebody threw a twinkie at him

getting douched with beer in the right field, upper mezzanine section when i was nine years old. did i mention that i was wearing my brand-new satin bullpen jacket (oh yeah, i still have it)

having frank thomas' foul ball (it was an interleague game) bounce of my hand and into the hand of the guy sitting next to me. that was the closest i ever came

the day that our greedy, bob dole votin' owners push the self-destruct button on my youth. "it'll increase attendance." we drew over three million almost every year! "it will revitalize downtown!" yeah, for people who are seeking jobs with aramark or sports' service. "the ballpark village will be a year around draw!" yeah, just like the half-vacated union station. fuckers.

bottom 7

even tony realizes reggie can't catch up to that heat. hello so!

can i add another one to my top five? every moment i spent at the stadium with my grandfather. earlier this year he tried to convince me that i had attended a game at sportsman's park with him in the early sixties. i almost didn't have the heart to tell him that i wasn't alive then. it was one of those rare, advanced age moments that are truly memorable.

top 8

spent monkeying around with blogger's font formatting. insert curseword: _________.

bottom 8

if we could have taken 2 out of 3 from houston during the last week of the season, things could have been different.

top 9

i can't find it in me to hate craig biggio. but hating the fact that someone wrote a haray caray, a fired cards broadcaster by the way, quote on the walls of busch stadium comes naturally.

bottom 9

if we have to end it now, i'm glad we're ending it at busch.

enjoy retirement larry walker. thanks for playing with a bulging disk and enduring the cortizone shots.

for the record: i'm rooting for the white sox and trusting that the final send off will be respectable.

there it is. congratulations astros. but i hope drayton mcclain chokes on his reprocessed meat.

there's no crying in baseball. no crying.

does somebody need to tell tom brennaman that shoeless joe has been dead for 50 years?

worth a thousand words

alex posted this beautiful picture and wrote some nice words about our community on his blog. thought you might enjoy the picture and the post.

memorandum from captain random: do or die edition

if the cardinals blow this one, i'm going to hit an eight-ball and burn down those damn crawford boxes. in fact, while i'm at it, i might burn the other crawford - that abomination of desolation - down as well.

top of the seventh

on the red wall behind our black couch, i am keeping a list of people to kill. at the top of my list are two fox commentators. three ryan dobson stickers will be awarded to the first person to guess who these two "broadcasting professionals" are (for the record, i do not consider "scooter" a color commentator).

as much as i bitch about my life on this blog, i should probably mention when things go well...on that note, pettitte just picked eckstein of with the most illicit move i have ever seen. that move would be called a balk in babe ruth league. i can't believe they let that, um, motherfucking broadman & holman author get away with that! anyway, today i ground out four and half hours at work, helped phil wyman and his team set up a massive stage in salem for their haunted happenings outreach, was greeted with squeals of delight and hugs when i returned to the afterschool program after a two week absence and spent two and a half hours at the bev library falling further in love with n.t. wright (his nuanced, thoroughgoing understanding on the kingdom of God, as put forth in Jesus and the Victory of God continues to impress me). when i returned from the library, hopped up on caffeine and hungry for dinner, i found that kellie and her parents were watching scarface, which they thought featured less nasty language and violence than goodfellas. that killed me. of course, the cardinals could ruin it all, but that remains to be seen.

bottom of the seventh

if the cardinals lose this series, i'm going to remember two major base running gaffes. the first was pujols going on contact with no outs last night and the second will be eckstein getting "balked off" in the top frame. of course, i'll also remember our manager and all-star centerfielder acting like adolescents in the late innings of a must-win game, but i don't want to talk about that.

if i was an angels or an astros fan, i think i would have to strangle myself with a rally monkey or hurl myself off of the crawford boxes. is there another group of fans that pair such extraordinary enthusiasm with such unsurpassed baseball ignorance? i didn't think so.

burke singled. runners at first and third with one out. come on, berkman, roll into a double play.

holy shit. that all-league flag football player just broke my heart.

so many people give me shit for my pessimism. but scoff all you want, dear friends. pessimism softens the blow.

top of the eighth

wouldn't you assign a prisoner with a tatooed map of the facility to perpetual solitary confinement?

four outs to go and the commentators are defending the legitimacy of berkman's 337 foot home run. inappropriate comment deleted.

three up, three down. i'm going down to the basement to swipe some of james' methyl alcohol.

bottom of the eighth

i got nothing.

the umpiring has been woefully inconsistent this post-season. i think it's time to bust up the union.

now they're showing pictures of the new busch stadium. pour on the salt guys, pour it on.

top of the ninth

can we say die?

you gotta love eckstein. taking what he can get, even when it doesn't really matter. he's been one of the brightest spots of this season.

edmonds. one runner on, we're down to our last out nad pujols is coming up behind you. lean into it!

they're giving us just enough rope to hang ourselves. prove me wrong, pujols, you true believer. prove me wrong.

holy fucking shit. holy fucking shit.

bottom of the ninth

the cardinals haven't had a home run of that magnitude in 20 years (ozzie smith, 1985 n.l.c.s.. can we say go crazy, folks. go crazy!?)

two away. convulsions are starting.

alex just made a great point. if jeter had hit that homerun or a certain half-crippled first baseman smoked a shot off of the american league's best closer, the commentators would have gone crazy. as it was, it sounded like they were disappointed that they will have to miss their complimentary halliburton tour tomorrow.

holy fucking shit.

a moment of clarity in the midst of obfuscation

"in my head and my body there's this race between life and death going on. but then isn't that the case for everybody who's ever lived, forever and always? isn't that the nature of being alive?" -douglas coupland in eleanor rigby, pg. 247.

two and a half years ago, i took a seminary exegesis class that focused on matthew. although the lectures were a little bit stiff and the professor was suffering from the power-point plague, it was good stuff.

at least i think it was good stuff. instead of reading the commentaries, interacting in exegetical conversations ("it's a subjective genitive? that's fascinating!") and honoring the prof with my attention ,i re-read the novels of douglas coupland. i found myself wrapped up in the apocalyptic visions of girlfriend in a coma, i participated in virtual picnics in the palm springs desert and i wondered why the european girls i met during my travels never showed up on my front porch sporting hot pink cowboy hats and unholstered cap guns. i read the coupland corpus in dr. ciampa's class and i felt guilty.

but i shouldn't have. i think that christians would be a lot better off and the church a bit more healthy if we were as attentive to the everyday revelations that we stumble across in novels, music, conversations and coincidences as we are to the scriptures. i fear that we will never be able to fully hear the poetic proclamations of the ancient prophets or respond to their summons until we are willing to listen to and live among the prophets in our midst.

that is all. krista, thanks for the long-term loan.

always out of context

"i've got reservations.
about so many things, but not about you." -wilco, reservations

"who would you rather bone? harriet miers or condoleezza rice?" -jamie simkins

"when we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers." -karl barth

"i write down good reasons to freeze to death
in my spiral notebook,
but in the long tresses of your hair
i am a babbling brook." -the mountain goats, broom people

"held under these smothering waves
by your strong and thick veined hands,
but one of these days i'm gonna wriggle up on dry land." -the mountain goats, has thou considered the tetrapod

"george bush is the smartest man i've ever met." -harriet miers, current supreme court nominee and two-time runner up for miss washington

musings from the media center

last week i read mark winegardner's crooked river burning. this novel sets the love story of david zielinsky, the son of a connected union organizer and a small town starlet, and anne o'connor, who's family is to cleveland what the daley's are to chicago, against the social, political and athletic history of cleveland. throughout the novel david and anne attend the ill-fated coronation ball of allen freed, the self-proclaimed progenitor of rock and roll, participate in the golden era of indians baseball and browns football, the scenes that featured satchel page were at the center of my emotional experience of the novel, and find themselves in the midst the race riots, racketering, economic shifts that comprise rust-belt era politics. the story of anne and david's on and off again, at turns naive and adulterous, relationship provides a strong enough plot. however, it is the detailed descriptions of their individual attempts to form and maintain their identity within the city limits of cleveland that i found most compelling. i was especially drawn to david, who throughout his journey from a bright-eyed and ambitious politician to a middle-aged man whose ideals were broken by city hall and busted by the electorate, always retained a vestige of his initial hope. through david, winegardner is reminding us that we will all be exposed to the subtleties of evil and will, at some point, find ourselves playing life from both sides. however, although he has deep sympathy for the situations and circumstances we will ultimately find ourselves in, winegardner still believes that a conversion to corruption or an embrace of a thoroughgoing hermeneutic of suspicion is still the result of a choice. in essence, even in the midst of the most despairing realities, winegardner believes that we can choose hope.

in the end, as other readers far wiser than i have noted, winegardner reminds us that by telling one story well, even a story that is set among the unexpected twists and turns of the cuyahoga, a writer can tell the story of us all.

he spoke…and it was good

just a moment ago i had my feet propped on my plastic trashcan, cheez-its in my mouth and an excerpt of brother campbell in my hands. as i savored the saltiness of both the crackers and the clipping, a hesitant, high-pitched voice said “how are you doing?”

at that moment, tears unexpectedly sprung. the voice faded as quickly as it came, but in that moment i remembered.

i remembered God’s pronouncement of the imago and recalled why i chose to follow jesus in the first place. i had the ears to hear the image and a desperate longing to see it fulfilled in myself as well as in the pock-marked, beyond plump, half-hearted goth of a boy who finally dared to offer a greeting.

i tell you this not to be overly sentimental or spiritual, but because i need you to remind me. remind me to pay attention to these rare moments when tears unexpectedly spring and a lump arises. remind me to listen and long for the voice who spoke of the image initially and the high-pitched voice which betrayed it today.

as i continue upon this road i am beginning to suspect that it is these unexpected encounters and remedial revelations, rather than our systematic theologies and well-constructed liturgies, which will enable us to persevere. and to persevere, from my perspective, seems to be the point.

while we debate the degree of miers' orthodoxy

n.p.r. reports

seven point six, thousands dead

how i hate mother

wondering through the warehouse

let me preface this poorly rendered reflection by admitting that i had a spectacular time at soybean bible college. although at first i felt “kind of cool, you know, and kind of weird. like something you would see on David Letterman,” i quickly adjusted to campus culture. to wit: within mere hours of my arrival i was drinking lukewarm coffee in the warehouse, desalinating my tongue and thinking that “shane and shane” might not be as queer as i first thought.

anyway, after sitting through an old professor’s class and responded to his introduction with a slightly suggestive joke that the students either didn’t understand or appreciate, the aforementioned scholar and i sat down to talk about ourselves and size one another up.

after the scholar reported that his doctoral studies went well and i ragged him a bit about his pacific coast tan lines, i began to tell him a bit about my ministry. i prefaced my comments with a warning that i was not an apologist for, but a friend of emergent (which seems to be the new willow creek whipping boy for soybean scholars) i told him that i had never felt more personally centered and integrated into the kingdom than i do at present.

much to my surprise, my scholarly friend responded to my story fairly sharply. he suggested that non-institutional forms of church were strains of a virus that sucked vitality out of and were completely dependent upon its institutional host and he openly wondered whether my investment in our community was hindering the Community of which many of us are a part. i mentioned that similar strategies were employed by Jesus and he responded by replacing WWJD with WWJWMTDT (which stands for “what would Jesus want me to do today?”). I told him his acronym was much too complicated and would never catch on (unlike my Forever Under Christ the King logo, but that’s another story altogether). when i admitted that i found the worldview focus at the alma mater to be fairly troubling, since such frames seems to be overly-reductionistic at best and a potential matrix of judgment at worst, he told me that it was a pity that i would not be endowed with the ability to dust the frames and replace them when necessary. confounded by my friend’s lack of affirmation i sought refuge in my coffee and promptly ingested the foreign object (a baby roach. oh soybean, some things never change. which reminds me: current students, don’t let the ultra-modern sheen of the cafeteria fool you. the septic system backs up through the drain in the kitchen when there is barely a threat of rain) found within.

i hope that you hear what i am saying as well as what i am not. as for the latter, do not doubt my love for my friend or assume that i question his intentions. he is not only on the road of incarnation and redemption that i wander, but is one of the only reasons i am there at all. however, i do question his elevation of the mega over the micro and am confused by his numeric metric of success. he clearly believes that i am called to great things. i wonder whether i have settled for less.

rest assured that i do not think so either. but it is not wise to quickly cast aside the words of one’s advisor.

you know what’s worse than elementary poetry and middle school prose? being in the middle of a post and realizing it is a mix of both.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i would like to thank those that made my time at soybean so enjoyable. neal, thanks for the hospitality and the ongoing conversation. i never expected you to speak with me at length, much less serve as my spiritual director. thank miriam for allowing this arrested adolescent to stay in your home and eat at your table. toad, thanks for blowing off work to catch up with me. jackaway, thank you for keeping me company, constantly pushing our conversations from the level of abstraction to one of application and not being too sore that i couldn’t take you to the bar. such connections between alumni and students are strictly forbidden. besides, i didn’t want to spoil your “week of e” pub crawl. tracy thank you for accompanying me to the crack house. conversations just seem to have more clarity in those environs. aaron, i’m glad that you have seen the light concerning sam adams. now we won’t have to bar your light-beer drinking ass from our beloved commonwealth. unnamed scholar, thank you for the conversation. your friendship and guidance mean more to me than i can explain. katie, i’m sorry that we did not get to connect. i loved being your youth pastor and am sure that you’re making your parents and rgcc proud. intro to the bible students, you should have laughed at my quip. rest assured that i learned all of my sexual humor from the Bible. rest assured that it is ok to laugh and even, occasionally, swear in the warehouse. in the latter matter, let jackaway serve as your shining example.

in case you're still wondering. i have since reverted to my original opinion about "shane and shane."

nothing like a train to take you far away

just this side of the horizon a combine is storing soybeans in the bin and fouling the air with dust and husks. God how i hated this place. up in the choir room that has long served as a lecture hall, Brian Johnson is speaking to freshmen about God's fidelity and Israel's infidelity. i half-expect him to recount his take on the judges cycle that he taught me so long ago. God how i love him.

i feel like an alien, an unwanted stranger sitting in front of the raucous, cinder block hell of a dorm that i once called home. i wish i could describing my time at soybean bible more accurately. at one moment it feels like a wilderness in which i am being tested and at another moment it seems to be a spiritually gedi, where my wounds are being salved and i am once again finding strength for the journey.

the dirty gold cornstalks in front of me are reverberating with old prayers, some of which were answered and others which apparently ricocheted off the cinderblock ceiling of titus 217. occasionally, as the cornstalks sway, i am reminded of ambitions that have been fulfilled and others which were unrealized.

God how i hated this place. but fortunately this place, this mis-shaped square of uninspired utilitarian architecture, gracious yet unsettling professors and post-pubescent students who are filled with libido, a love of God and ambitions not unlike my own, has never hated me.

God, thank you for this black, fertile soil in which i died and have been born again. thank you for the hands which cultivated and occasionally pruned my heart. although this is the time of harvest, i hope my fallow field is once again suitable for sowing.

stuff that has been making me laugh

over the past two weeks massachusetts has celebrated the birth of two evacuee babies. the name of the first baby was, predictably, katrina. her parents said that they thought the name was "kind of cool, you know, and kind of weird. like something you would see on david letterman." the second baby has been christened cape cod in honor of the region that has so generously welcomed and served the evacuees over the past three weeks. i have no quarrel with people naming their children after natural disasters, hurricanes, major civil war battles or even tropical fruit (yesterday npr featured an interview with a woman named chiquita). however, i do not consider such names exempt from ridicule.

a humble request

i am planning to visit friends and make merry in lincoln illinois next monday and tuesday (10.3 - 10.4). if you (a) live in lincoln (b) read this blog and (c) would be willing to let me crash on your floor on monday night please let me know. i would prefer to stay on campus, where i can interact with the students and perhaps subvert a few minds, but am well aware that beggars can't be choosers.

if you are willing to briefly house this jaded optimist please drop a comment or send an email to jeffkelliegentry@yahoo.com. your assistance in this matter is greatly appreciated.

sunday morning

sitting in my chair, wise candle lit.
crumbs on my shirt, taste of coffee in my mouth.
i am overwhelmed with love.

convinced of my creator's beneficence
overwhelmed by his presence
my eyes well up
my heart breaks
for those who walk in, out and around my life
shining like the sun.

thank God for these fleeting moments
in which we enter the holy and hidden heart of it all.

memorandum from captain random:

nepotism provides the paper on which many an evangelical publishing contract is writ. not only james, but shirley, ryan and danae now ply the focus on the family shit. for another case, you needn't look far, billy has anointed franklin, ruth and anne as his literary arms. since these fuckers are setting up franchises i've decided to get in the game, from now on jeff dobson graham warren is my name. so let's sign that contract mr. tyndale, miss multnomah, let's publish more of the same, don't question my capabilities, just look at my motherfucking name.

this afternoon i'm listening to sufjan stevens and he's surprising me with his rythmic, contextualized truth. on illinoise sufjan provides a compelling apologetic for listening to life within your particular context (isn't particularity an essential component of art? what is a painting without a frame or a photo without a subject?). his music won't simply please your ear, it will suggest straight paths for your soul. four stars, sufjan, four stars.

i think everyone has a totem they love to touch or something they smell that reminds them of home. my totems are two misshapen black rocks, one stays on the nightstand, the other on an ontario shore. the smell is musty yet warm, it proceeds from the glove my papa once wore.

sufjan, what's up with this half-assed poetry you provoke? i think it's safer to stick to prose.

yet another reason i love sinners and saints: this afternoon i was talking to brooke about an old “okie” friend that i would like to beat some sense into. this friend continues to make rather poor decisions and does not seem to be willing or able to face the consequences of his actions. although i know that my pastoral counseling professors would question my treatment plan, i am convinced of its possible efficacy. fortunately, brooke told me that my convictions were for shit and suggested a wiser, more loving approach. i cannot imagine leading a community by myself. the shared leadership structure of s & s doesn’t ensure that we’ll never misread a particular situation, rend a relationship or do any number of additional ignorant things, but it does make such fuck ups far less common. that Jesus was up to something when he sent the disciples out two by two. moreover, st. paul might have been wrong-headed about women, but he got the plural leadership thing right.

musing...

i am beginning to think that one of the reasons the authors of scripture espoused and exalted an eschatological perspective is because it is quite difficult to keep people looking and moving forward.

i am a perfect example.

although i have yet to crack thirty, i already find myself constantly doubling back on the past. i cannot seem to finish a day without remembering how superior i felt as kerrie sat beside me on the elementary school swings, looking into the cracked mirror that produced ms. simmons' "portraits of monkeys" or smelling the grease at the rex's chicken on 21st and mingo. i also find myself wondering what happened to the more obscure characters in my play. i wonder whether gabe, my handicapped friend from fifth grade is still living with his parents or whether he is in a group home and i wonder whether rhett's intellectual acumen eventually enabled him to escape the poverty and familial dysfunction that always found a way to entangle him. for some reason i find it difficult to remember the characters in the last novel that i read, but i never find it difficult to drudge up memories of hell night at the citadel or how it felt like to hit adam buker in the face.

i'm not unthankful for these memories, but i am afraid of getting trapped.

i need to weave these strands of story together so that they will support me as i scramble up the mountains and dredge through the valleys that lie before me. these stories contain the whispered wisdom and crucial questions that will help me find my way. even more importantly, these stories bind me to those without whom i would be bereft and utterly alone.
but i cannot let these stories, sentimental and important though they might be, keep me from moving forward. these strands of support cannot become ties that bind me to who i was, lest i fail to continue becoming.

Jesus once said that "no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." i think this is kind-of what he was getting at.

reason #9836 that we're taking her to the kill shelter. fucking douche.

happy haiku friday

surrender to rain

let it soak right through your skin

find refuge with them

bad teeth work for hugh grant. i wish they would work for me

i am the reason that dentists commit suicide. i flinch when they stick me with a needle, i wince at the sound of a drill and i jump out of my skin when their metal hook catches one of my (many) fillings and delivers that unique, metal to metal shock.

i am the reason that dentists commit suicide. for this reason my former dentists have indulged me with the beautiful, bubby hygienists who aren't at the top of their trade, but can keep a male mind occupied. moreover, while they encourage more stalwart types like dr. james to do it sans novocain, they drug me to the nth degree and occasionally indulge me with a snort of nitrous.

i am the reason that dentists commit suicide. unfortunately, for that reason, dr. a has taken the gloves off. instead of indulging me and perhaps inadvertently nurturing my fears, she has decided to show me tough love. so she removed the bubbly hygienist with the brilliant personality, barred me from the bland hygienist who isn't much to look at but is easy on the ole gums and has forever banned me from the quirky-cute african-american girl in the front room. instead, she has put me in the hands of the pissed-off armenian. before today i had dealt with the pissed off armenian once before, so i knew about her lectures on holy dental hygiene, her ability to use the suction stick like a cattle prod and her tendency to transfer her hatred for the turks onto my sensitive teeth. after the last time she made me bleed and nearly brought me to tears i asked the receptionist to steer me away from her little suite of pain in the future. she said that wouldn't be a problem.

the bitch lied.

today, when i stepped into the office around 7:45 a.m. i was somewhat confident and almost non-chalant about my visit. i figured that i would draw the bubble, she'd clean the chicklets in forty-five to an hour and i'd be on my merry way. so you can imagine how my stomach dropped with the receptionist parted her nicotine stained teeth, gave me a cruel little smile and said "jeff gentry? armenian, around the corner." on my way to the corner suite, i steadied myself by remembering my desire not to prejudge, after all - the day of my last visit might have coincided with the anniversary of a divorce or death, and wrangled up a bit of courage by reminding myself that i would only be subjected to her fury for one hour.

i should have stuck to my judgmental guns.

the armenian began by numbing the right side of my mouth. after about six minutes of swabbing a bitter substance in my mouth she matter-of-factly told me that she was numbing the incorrect side. after all, i had already had scaling (a deep form of cleaning that is required for those of us who struggle with minor gum disease. don't ask for details) on the right side of my mouth. "didn't you rememeber" she asked accusingly. "you're the one with the chart, bitch," i thought to myself, but did not say, since she is the one with the sharp, probing instruments at her disposal. instead i feebly shrugged my shoulders and admitted that the fact had "slipped my mind." she then proceed to numb the left side of my mouth with strokes that betrayed her fury. as she set up her instruments and began to pull back my gums so that she could scrape the recently concealed roots of my teeth i could not think that this woman would make a hell of a dominatrix. unfortunately this seedy little thought was completely without joy, for in this particular instance i was stuck in the role of the gimp and the damn zipper was open.

the rest of the visit was filled with fun experiences such as the co-mingling of mucus and blood in my mouth and the fun, fresh feel of metal probing metal in my mouth. i don't know why i shared this story other than to warn you that if your dentist is not particularly prone to suicide you should not ignore your dental hygiene or piss off the doc in any other way. although chances are small that your dentist has an amoral armenian working for her, she has other ways of getting to you. trust me, you don't want your friendly dental healthcare professional to go medieval on your ass.

do you have any dental horror stories to share? if you do, please drop a comment below. the best story of the bunch will win you a limited-edition three pack of ryan dobson 2 live 4 stickers. these stickers have been generously donated by the good folks at lightway christian stores. no purchase necessary. void where prohibited. no, this was not edited.