SCENES FROM AN ORTHODONTIST'S WAITING ROOM


on a monday morning.

A pile of magazines akimbo, atop what looks like the desk I had in Ms. Strauss’ fourth grade: scratched, worn, faded, bearing the marks of a generation or three of students and dental patients who’ve sat before and moved beyond it.

Thank you very much.

A smile, a nod, the passing of a clipboard from a mother with too much make-up to a receptionist who doesn’t need any. Beside the mother, two young girls whose apples of fashion sense have not fallen far from the overgrown tree; teased hair and painted nails and Ugg(-o) boots that, were it forty degrees cooler, would still be unnecessary, or at least unwise. But this morning, with fifty degrees of rain and unseasonable warmth, they just seem untoward: the foolish choices of two young girls with, if her fur collar and lace cuffs are any reliable indicator, an excellent role model in the practice.

Singing words of wisdom, let it be…

Paul McCartney now, with good advice, one song after Rod Stewart, live and unplugged, looked to find a reason to believe. The music, like the brick on these uneven walls, is not new, but firm and strong and sturdy enough for this day, this place, this long and often frenetic room of comings and going and too-loud cell-phonings.

I’m at the orthodontist’s office now. We’re almost done.

I hope so. And I wonder whether, had she just opened the door and leaned her head out and spoken at the same volume, her friend would have heard her anyway.

A polo untucked. A sweater carefully draped for a casual look over the shoulders. A Gucci bag and glasses and three kids with Under Armour sweat jackets stretched over out-of-shape bodies. I imagine there’s a Land Rover, with an onboard DVD player and the residue of at least two trips to Whole Foods scattered across the floor, waiting outside.

Two brothers fight over a magazine. No, a catalog. Lots of sneakers at prices that could feed these kids for a day and two kids in Africa for a year. They will be looked at and bought and worn and, for the first few moments, perhaps, appreciated, shuffling four-and-a-half feet below three-thousand-dollar smiles that, with a nod and a shrug, will pass for gentility.

Somewhere amid the din and clatter of suction tubes and hard-working hygienists, Adam sits, mouth open and wary, waiting for the moment when he can leave these things, like all the rest of his thirteen-year-old uncertainty, behind. He spits. He probably rinses twice.

The waiting room’s burnt-orange sea parts, some file left and some file right and so, here in the middle, I am alone with my thoughts, my keyboard, and my own, agitated stillness.

Jimmy Buffet now, content with himself and his simple pleasures, wasting away again.

I know how he feels.

Posted: Mon - January 7, 2008 at 12:05 PM          

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