Crawling

I shuffled along the linoleum tiles wrenching my neck to get a glance at the clock as I crawled past the open kitchen door. The clock was carved from a solid block of wood, stained a dark glazed brown, and shaped to resemble my home state of Indiana. A small plaque attached to the bottom commemorated my father’s two-year tenure as President of the Indiana Dental Society. It read, "Old Dentists Don’t Fade Away, They Just Lose Their Pull".

My father’s friends from the Indiana Dental Society have children who have wisely chosen dentistry as a profession. This has always caused me to examine my own choices. Dentistry is a well-paying occupation. Writing about it is not. My father chose his career because he was interested in working with children. I could never understand this. It seems like it would be enough to ask one person to stick their fingers into hundreds of strange mouths a week. It seems inconceivable to have each one of those mouths attached to a hysterical six-year-old.

Whenever I walked into the waiting room of his children’s dentistry office, I would hear him working from the back.

"Just a second, just a second. Wave at Mommy. Wave at Mommy! WAVE AT MOMMY!"

(Quiet Sobbing building to hysterical wailing)

"Almost. Almost. There ya go. Done."

My father would wipe the sweat from his eyes and remove his white surgical gloves. "Now you’re a big boy, and you can choose a brand new toothbrush and sticker from Mr. Molar’s treasure chest."

The Mr. Molar treasure chest overflowed with toothbrushes, sugarless suckers and pediatric dental propaganda produced in the form of small circular stickers. The stickers documented the adventures of a host of colorful cartoon animals with a pathological obsession for dental health and wide toothy smiles. A grinning dog dressed in a football uniform scores the winning touchdown while proclaiming for all to hear that "Brushing is for winners." A slam-dunking squirrel carrying an oversized box of dental floss under one arm excitedly and gleefully exclaims to the crowd, "Flossing is fun!" After a successful visit to my dad’s office, the youthful patient would walk out the door proudly displaying their sticker like a battle weary veteran adorned with a well-deserved purple heart.

Dentists seem to feel that the dental health of their own children is a direct representation of their professional accomplishment. My own dental health is of a state usually reserved for developing nations and tribal Bushmen. The only problem with my father applying his trade to our personal relationship is that he doesn’t hold back the jokes and sarcastic comments. He reserves these for family members, his only patients without access to a malpractice lawyer. Before starting his work on my teeth he would yell to the back of the office, "I’m going in. Call my wife and tell her I love her." Chuckling to himself for a few minutes he would reach for a squealing drill, taking a moment to enjoy my terror before resurrecting my dental health.

My mother, in stark contrast to my father, is a former Fulbright scholar in mathematics, Dr. Laura Schlessinger zealot, and domestic overachiever. She applies mathematical precision to household tasks and the self-righteous vengeance of the Spanish Inquisition to her personal relationships. Her list of heroes includes the aforementioned Dr. Laura, Dr. James Dobson (a family values lunatic), and Judge Judy, a woman with the legal right to tell everyone else what’s wrong with their lives. My mother has the discipline of a Samurai warrior. She loves to-do lists. Her 3 x 5 cards, are attached to everything within her reach. She is a card-carrying member of the family values crowd. I sat down to a warm, low fat meal balanced amongst the food groups at 6:30 each night. My family went to church every Sunday morning, and I learned hundreds of bible verses to become a confirmed member of the Indianapolis Lutheran church.

Combining religious fervor and medical science produced some strange results throughout my childhood, but none was as strange as the year I spent crawling through the living room of our suburban house. You have to understand that my parents believed that there was a medical answer to every childhood problem. Bedwetting indicated severe psychological trauma that could only be treated with puppet therapy. Picking your nose and staring out the window of Science class should be immediately addressed with daily doses of Ritalin. I am very thankful that I had not been born during a previous period of scientific development. My academic troubles might have been addressed with a good bloodletting or a lobotomy.

I had the same problems as most kids. I simply found more interesting things than school, especially when I was at school. I was not a bad kid and I considered myself intelligent, but my report cards consistently indicated otherwise. My favorite classroom activity was staring at any inanimate object in the general vicinity with my mouth open. I practiced this art throughout the school day. I would occasionally break up the monotony of staring by drawing a ninja or space ship on my notebook. Years later I found an old notebook neatly labeled “Fourth Grade Math" in green marker. It contained page after page of poorly drawn martial arts figures, space ships attacking each other, and laser-studded robots but scarcely any indication of math. As my art progressed I became more abstract and imaginative. Legions of space ninjas robots were now attacking the mother ship. I had no regard for the lines that were placed on the page to keep things somewhat horizontal. Worst of all, I was always misplacing the crumpled papers that I turned in as homework assignments.

My mother was outraged when I brought home two Ds on my report card. She had been Valedictorian of her high school class and I could already hear the discussion as she dialed my father’s office. About a week later, Dad was watching a local newscast when a feature came on about a doctor promoting some rather revolutionary childhood development theories. My father took notice and in a few weeks, I found myself sitting in the office of Dr. Wilber Smithson at the Pediatric Development Institute in Indianapolis. The good doctor first asked me a series of questions about my favorite toys, television shows, and school subjects. This trained medical practitioner came to the conclusion that my academic problems were caused by my early development as a toddler. I had learned to walk too soon, frustrating my natural genius and making school difficult. My worried parents were quick to ask how this might be remedied. Dr. Smithson explained that we needed to create an exercise routine that would develop my crawling skills. The doctor asked me to crawl around the office a few times so that he could explain his approach. I gasped. Dr. Smithson was obviously out of his fucking mind if he thought that I was going to crawl around the floor of his office. My parents pleaded with me. In the end they resorted to bribery. When football cards were brought into the bargaining it did not take me long to sell out. I started the therapy each night after dinner and a short fight with my parents.

"Honey, please just do it," My mother pleaded with me while brandishing half a dozen packs of Topps official NFL trading cards, the equivalent of crack cocaine in my elementary school hallways. "No, the Dukes of Hazard will not be over by the time you’re done."

When my father got involved, I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave in.
"Look Mister, I paid a lot of money for this. If your mother tells you to crawl, then start crawling."

I shuffled down the yellow shag carpeting on all fours, turned left at the wooden plaque inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer, looping at the far end of my parents’ bedroom under an oil painting of a sailboat. My entire route took a minute and a half to complete. I had to do this forty times before I completed my nightly obligation and received my coveted NFL trading cards. This in itself would be enough to traumatize a normal ten-year-old. Luckily for me, one of the benefits of being extremely lazy was that dignity was just too much work. I could not be bothered with the excessive effort required to fight off a pair of middle-aged, born-again suburbanites that had found the Holy Grail of perfect penmanship. To my parents’ credit, they followed Dr. Smithson’s rather unusual theory to the letter. They were required to crawl right along with me, holding down my feet or applying pressure to make it more of a workout. My father - President of the Indianapolis Dental Society, expert Bass fisherman, and pillar of the community - ended up spending an hour each night crawling behind his beloved idiot son. I still wonder what my parents told their friends at holiday get-togethers and church barbecues.

After several months of competitive crawling, I began to figure out why Dr. Smithson’s patients had such dramatic results. It was easy to get out of the crawling regiment. All I had to do was put forth a minimal effort to improve my spelling and concentrate more when I was writing. This was a small price to pay compared to the humiliation of crawling around your house with a parent attached for an hour each night. Dr. Smithson’s elementary school underachievers simply chose the easiest thing to do when presented with a significantly worse alternative.

Undoubtedly, Dr. Smithson’s theories would be equally effective for many adults.
"God Damn it Jim, sales numbers are down across the board. Perhaps it would be a good idea to crawl around the office for a few months until your negotiating skills improve."

In the end, I became admired amongst my peers for my exquisite collection of football cards. The improved penmanship was short lived as I soon reverted back to the illegible scrawl. After spending more time on all fours than any man has since we evolved from chimpanzees, my father still believes that medical science can solve any childhood problem. When asked about the failure of our time crawling around the first floor of the house he replies with a smile, “Well, I have beautiful writing."

along the linoleum tiles wrenching my neck to get a glance at the clock as I crawled past the open kitchen door. The clock was carved from a solid block of wood, stained a dark glazed brown, and shaped to resemble my home state of Indiana. A small plaque attached to the bottom commemorated my father’s two-year tenure as President of the Indiana Dental Society. It read, "Old Dentists Don’t Fade Away, They Just Lose Their Pull".

My father’s friends from the Indiana Dental Society have children who have wisely chosen dentistry as a profession. This has always caused me to examine my own choices. Dentistry is a well-paying occupation. Writing about it is not. My father chose his career because he was interested in working with children. I could never understand this. It seems like it would be enough to ask one person to stick their fingers into hundreds of strange mouths a week. It seems inconceivable to have each one of those mouths attached to a hysterical six-year-old.

Whenever I walked into the waiting room of his children’s dentistry office, I would hear him working from the back.

"Just a second, just a second. Wave at Mommy. Wave at Mommy! WAVE AT MOMMY!"

(Quiet Sobbing building to hysterical wailing)

"Almost. Almost. There ya go. Done."

My father would wipe the sweat from his eyes and remove his white surgical gloves. "Now you’re a big boy, and you can choose a brand new toothbrush and sticker from Mr. Molar’s treasure chest."

The Mr. Molar treasure chest overflowed with toothbrushes, sugarless suckers and pediatric dental propaganda produced in the form of small circular stickers. The stickers documented the adventures of a host of colorful cartoon animals with a pathological obsession for dental health and wide toothy smiles. A grinning dog dressed in a football uniform scores the winning touchdown while proclaiming for all to hear that "Brushing is for winners." A slam-dunking squirrel carrying an oversized box of dental floss under one arm excitedly and gleefully exclaims to the crowd, "Flossing is fun!" After a successful visit to my dad’s office, the youthful patient would walk out the door proudly displaying their sticker like a battle weary veteran adorned with a well-deserved purple heart.

Dentists seem to feel that the dental health of their own children is a direct representation of their professional accomplishment. My own dental health is of a state usually reserved for developing nations and tribal Bushmen. The only problem with my father applying his trade to our personal relationship is that he doesn’t hold back the jokes and sarcastic comments. He reserves these for family members, his only patients without access to a malpractice lawyer. Before starting his work on my teeth he would yell to the back of the office, "I’m going in. Call my wife and tell her I love her." Chuckling to himself for a few minutes he would reach for a squealing drill, taking a moment to enjoy my terror before resurrecting my dental health.

My mother, in stark contrast to my father, is a former Fulbright scholar in mathematics, Dr. Laura Schlessinger zealot, and domestic overachiever. She applies mathematical precision to household tasks and the self-righteous vengeance of the Spanish Inquisition to her personal relationships. Her list of heroes includes the aforementioned Dr. Laura, Dr. James Dobson (a family values lunatic), and Judge Judy, a woman with the legal right to tell everyone else what’s wrong with their lives. My mother has the discipline of a Samurai warrior. She loves to-do lists. Her 3 x 5 cards, are attached to everything within her reach. She is a card-carrying member of the family values crowd. I sat down to a warm, low fat meal balanced amongst the food groups at 6:30 each night. My family went to church every Sunday morning, and I learned hundreds of bible verses to become a confirmed member of the Indianapolis Lutheran church.

Combining religious fervor and medical science produced some strange results throughout my childhood, but none was as strange as the year I spent crawling through the living room of our suburban house. You have to understand that my parents believed that there was a medical answer to every childhood problem. Bedwetting indicated severe psychological trauma that could only be treated with puppet therapy. Picking your nose and staring out the window of Science class should be immediately addressed with daily doses of Ritalin. I am very thankful that I had not been born during a previous period of scientific development. My academic troubles might have been addressed with a good bloodletting or a lobotomy.

I had the same problems as most kids. I simply found more interesting things than school, especially when I was at school. I was not a bad kid and I considered myself intelligent, but my report cards consistently indicated otherwise. My favorite classroom activity was staring at any inanimate object in the general vicinity with my mouth open. I practiced this art throughout the school day. I would occasionally break up the monotony of staring by drawing a ninja or space ship on my notebook. Years later I found an old notebook neatly labeled “Fourth Grade Math" in green marker. It contained page after page of poorly drawn martial arts figures, space ships attacking each other, and laser-studded robots but scarcely any indication of math. As my art progressed I became more abstract and imaginative. Legions of space ninjas robots were now attacking the mother ship. I had no regard for the lines that were placed on the page to keep things somewhat horizontal. Worst of all, I was always misplacing the crumpled papers that I turned in as homework assignments.

My mother was outraged when I brought home two Ds on my report card. She had been Valedictorian of her high school class and I could already hear the discussion as she dialed my father’s office. About a week later, Dad was watching a local newscast when a feature came on about a doctor promoting some rather revolutionary childhood development theories. My father took notice and in a few weeks, I found myself sitting in the office of Dr. Wilber Smithson at the Pediatric Development Institute in Indianapolis. The good doctor first asked me a series of questions about my favorite toys, television shows, and school subjects. This trained medical practitioner came to the conclusion that my academic problems were caused by my early development as a toddler. I had learned to walk too soon, frustrating my natural genius and making school difficult. My worried parents were quick to ask how this might be remedied. Dr. Smithson explained that we needed to create an exercise routine that would develop my crawling skills. The doctor asked me to crawl around the office a few times so that he could explain his approach. I gasped. Dr. Smithson was obviously out of his fucking mind if he thought that I was going to crawl around the floor of his office. My parents pleaded with me. In the end they resorted to bribery. When football cards were brought into the bargaining it did not take me long to sell out. I started the therapy each night after dinner and a short fight with my parents.

"Honey, please just do it," My mother pleaded with me while brandishing half a dozen packs of Topps official NFL trading cards, the equivalent of crack cocaine in my elementary school hallways. "No, the Dukes of Hazard will not be over by the time you’re done."

When my father got involved, I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave in.
"Look Mister, I paid a lot of money for this. If your mother tells you to crawl, then start crawling."

I shuffled down the yellow shag carpeting on all fours, turned left at the wooden plaque inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer, looping at the far end of my parents’ bedroom under an oil painting of a sailboat. My entire route took a minute and a half to complete. I had to do this forty times before I completed my nightly obligation and received my coveted NFL trading cards. This in itself would be enough to traumatize a normal ten-year-old. Luckily for me, one of the benefits of being extremely lazy was that dignity was just too much work. I could not be bothered with the excessive effort required to fight off a pair of middle-aged, born-again suburbanites that had found the Holy Grail of perfect penmanship. To my parents’ credit, they followed Dr. Smithson’s rather unusual theory to the letter. They were required to crawl right along with me, holding down my feet or applying pressure to make it more of a workout. My father - President of the Indianapolis Dental Society, expert Bass fisherman, and pillar of the community - ended up spending an hour each night crawling behind his beloved idiot son. I still wonder what my parents told their friends at holiday get-togethers and church barbecues.

After several months of competitive crawling, I began to figure out why Dr. Smithson’s patients had such dramatic results. It was easy to get out of the crawling regiment. All I had to do was put forth a minimal effort to improve my spelling and concentrate more when I was writing. This was a small price to pay compared to the humiliation of crawling around your house with a parent attached for an hour each night. Dr. Smithson’s elementary school underachievers simply chose the easiest thing to do when presented with a significantly worse alternative.

Undoubtedly, Dr. Smithson’s theories would be equally effective for many adults.
"God Damn it Jim, sales numbers are down across the board. Perhaps it would be a good idea to crawl around the office for a few months until your negotiating skills improve."

In the end, I became admired amongst my peers for my exquisite collection of football cards. The improved penmanship was short lived as I soon reverted back to the illegible scrawl. After spending more time on all fours than any man has since we evolved from chimpanzees, my father still believes that medical science can solve any childhood problem. When asked about the failure of our time crawling around the first floor of the house he replies with a smile, “Well, I have beautiful writing."