Toothless Week

Why is it the older that you get the more you look back to the past? This last week, now known as “The Toothless Week,” brought back many memories for me. On Tuesday, I took my daughter to have her wisdom teeth pulled. While I was sitting in the waiting room during the procedure, I thought back thirty-five years to the day when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. It was July 3, 1976 and I had just started my rotation of four days off after having worked ten days on Yellow Butte Fire Lookout. This wasn’t how I had envisioned celebrating our country’s 200^th birthday, but I am sure that when my parents had scheduled the appointment they weren’t thinking anything other than getting it done before I had to head back to college. I remember lying on the living room couch watching all the parades, concerts and firework displays on TV. Of course my face looked like a big round balloon and my best friend was the aspirin bottle! I’m fairly certain I was alone as the rest of the family was probably working at the Freez-Ett Drive-In that we owned. It would have been a big weekend for us with the holiday traffic and people stopping for ice cream, hamburgers and fries on the way back from the beach. 

Just like all those years ago when I rested for four days and then headed back to work on the fifth, my daughter Kate did the same. Only she had to go back to work at a restaurant, trying to ignore the fact that her cheeks were still swollen and smiling when people commented on her appearance. At least the only one who saw me was the fire ranger as he drove me up the mountain and the rabbits and squirrels that lived in the underbrush around the lookout. Somehow I don’t think it mattered to them that I still looked like a chipmunk.