The cleaning, the September of ourselves

I was sitting in the dentist’s office the other day with the dental hygienist. I always have believed that the dentist - like the President, or the British Monarchy - is really more symbolic than anything else. Now, granted, if your tooth is jammed into your gum-line, or rips into your pallet through some freak kitchen accident, the dental hygienist cannot help you.

But on most occasions it is the hygienist who straps on the plastic gloves and jams her hands - armed with a hook spike - into your mouth and deals with the blood from months of neglect to the build up of plaque rooting into the cementum.

Anyway, the hygienist, Mary, was working me over quite well. I was actually on time for a six-month checkup and she commended me, “Remember last time you were here, it had been 20 months.”

I gurgled out some noise to acknowledge and apologize, again, for this fact. I remember, after about 45 minutes of that original long-delayed visit that the woman’s hands looked like she had just closed up my corroded artery. Still, I had no cavities, I was blessed with strong teeth.

She was rooting about, having me suck out the water she sprayed into my mouth with a little device that reminded me of liposuction, when she asked me, “Well, what do you think about the Twins this year.”

Let me first acknowledge that I was not wearing any Twins paraphernalia, nor can I recall ever talking about the Twins with my hygienist at any-point in my life, so this was spontaneous, apparently.

I said, “They’re really great,” even though my mind was filled with so much more.

I always consider the moment that strangers ask you about anything concrete - that is anything outside of, “How are you?” or “What do you do?” or “Can you hurry the fuc- up please?” - the moment that a happening is reaching critical mass. Politics and religion are always at critical mass. Britney Spears has been there for about six years, Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson had their moments, Facebook is getting there, as is the iPhone. The RNC will be this weeks topic, but at this point in the late summer in Minnesota, the Twins have reached critical mass, people believe that they can just bring them up at any moment and you should have an opinion.

She then began applying the candy-coated protective layer on my teeth. “That Michael Phelps too, he’s been amazing.”

This was around week two of the Olympics.

I tried to mutter something about the 4×100 relay but couldn’t muster it, she smiled at me though and continued, “he’s like a man-fish, or fish-man.” She pulled the sealant device out of my mouth and I rinsed, “No, no, I agree he reminds me of those first fish that grew legs and washed up on the shore.”

She nodded, but told me she didn’t really agree with some of the tenants of evolution. “It’s just, really, how do you go from one little cell to having birds and lions and humans, really?”

I thought about this for a second.

“Well, how do you explain the Twins? They were expected to be awful but they’ve got a real shot. Evolution, God, baseball, it all works in mysterious ways.”

She agreed, she told me she liked Carlos Gomez and the new outfield (at this point she was back in my mouth with the spinner so I tried to say, “Span,” but it didn’t come across).

It was funny to me, this kindly woman talking to me about the one subject I had relative expert knowledge on but I couldn’t say much. I just had to mutter acknowledgments and glib responses. She talked and talked and talked about how surprised her husband was and how surprised her son was and how surprised she was.

The discussion followed some trace of this: Gomez, Span, Mauer, new stadium, how the standings work (”I mean they are in first place, but they never stay there”), how the team was supposed to be in last place, the White Sox as a general opponent and adversary, Joe Nathan, Ron Gardenhire (extended time on this topic including his mannerisms, his commercials with his wife, his grandfatherly appearance, and how the team is so young that it is making his hair grey (I agreed with this)), and Torii Hunter.

All this time she just spoke and spoke and spoke, and her knowledge was not expansive but it was rudimentary in all aspects; she had the grasp. When she finished the dentist came in.

He was a sturdy, grey haired and strong-jawed man with a cavernous face that reeked of self-awareness and personal direction, his eyes were sunken in and his cheeks poofed out only slightly, but enough to make him appear jolly. I imagined him with a tumbler, his wife unbuttoning his top-button and rubbing the tip of his chest when he came home. He gripped my hand firmly.

“So, Mary got you all set up.”

I nodded.

He pulled out an X-ray and showed me where my wisdom teeth were impacting along my jaw.

“Now, we don’t have to remove them, but if you want you should go see a surgeon and decide from there.”

It was then that I wanted to ask him what exactly it was that he did. I considered this and decided that he was a facilitator of sorts, a yes man to me, a man who made me feel good because, whatever the circumstance, he was in control. I doubted that he was right all the time, but he managed.

I saw Ron Gardenhire in him, and I felt a knowing surge of happiness in seeing the way that the universe runs parallel with the ballgame. I wondered what that made Mary, and what that made me. I wondered where we were going, and who was taking us there. I wondered if our expectations for ourselves were too great, or too shallow. Perhaps all of our failings would rear their head tomorrow - perhaps we would be better than we imagined.

This man was just a dentist, but was a leader of sorts, and I could use him to gain something necessary for myself, but he could not save me anymore than the Twins could. And I could not give him anything to make his life more full. What did that mean about our relationship? Was it just money? Did he expect something more of me, should I have expected more from him?

It is not hard to break the expectations of others, to let someone down, to make them proud. It is instead the dutiful nature of understanding how it is, that we, as individuals, make that happen that creates anxiety and stress in the mind and heart.

It is not our job to predict where others are going, or what their role will be. Each man controls only himself. He can harm others, he can please others, but it is he who makes that decision, not us.

I decided then, while the dentist smiled at me, gave me that feeling of warmth, and said goodbye, that I would allow Delmon Young to simply be. I would allow all the bullpen to simply be. I would try to enjoy the simplicity of the game and the enjoyment of knowing how far we as humans can go on the dreams and works of others.

But I also decided that, of course, we ultimately have to get off, and go ourselves, alone, out there somewhere in September.