RETURN TRIP FROM THE DENTIST

I feel like I’m losing my character. With all that snow and ice on the roads I kept looking in the review mirror, not because someone was following me or that I had wanted to change lanes, no, I kept staring in the review mirror at my smile. I kept asking, “Where’s the history? The history’s vanished,” followed by, “It’s only temporary.”

I’m no Jerry Flanory. Now there’s a character! In 2004 his toothy grill consisted of a handful of adult teeth. Not bad considering a healthy adult with good oral hygiene has 32. But good ol’ Jerry—count’em—he had a whopping 5 teeth, “one, two, three, four, five!” However, this did not stop good ol’ Jerry from slapping the Michigan Department of Corrections with a lawsuit for denying him toothpaste. Jerry claims that because he refused to attend prison classes he was being punished by my employer, that they knowingly and deliberately denied him toothpaste for well over a year.

Sadly, in 2006, he lost another tooth.

Well I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I’m sure good ol’ Jerry filed for indigent status, hoping he’d be able to sit on his ass and get a small stipend for hygiene products. But it doesn’t work that way. He never earned his high school diploma so my employer enrolled him in school where classes pay 59 cents a day (approximately $8.85 a month)—enough to cover the cost of a tube of Colgate. A win-win situation.

But good ol’ Jerry doesn’t see it that way. The real kicker behind his lawsuit is that my employer inventoried Jerry’s cell and found 20 tubes of toothpaste, 4 toothbrushes, 17 bars of soap, and 3 combs, enough hygiene products for an entire cellblock wing.

Jerry plans on representing himself. After serving his time, gaining his freedom, then returning to prison, one can conclude that he’ll lose his case. As for me, I just want my character back. “It’s only temporary,” I keep telling myself, “it’s only temporary.”