It was a long & convoluted dream, so we’ll pick up where I looked in the mirror & realized that I had a second molar coming in behind the current set. And by “behind” I mean “on the roof of my mouth”.
Since that couldn’t possibly be right, I investigated further and determined that one of my molars had split clean in half and the cap was the bit stuck to the roof of my mouth like an errant popcorn kernel. Why that didn’t hurt like hell I don’t know.
Anyway, my dad took me to the dentist in his old pickup, after we dropped Nighthawk off for his surgery, and I was able to get an emergency appointment with some dentist I’ve never seen before in a ward-like setting very similar to the big room where my orthodontist used to have four kids worked on at once. And that’s how I knew this was gonna hurt.
They got halfway done the work and sent me out to the waiting room so the sealant could cure (did I mention this was a dream?) when for some reason Dad and I decided that it was the perfect time to take me to a doctor’s office I’d never visited before to have them look at my sinuses.
So off we go to a building that was halfway to the architecture of the junior high I attended, and halfway to the architecture of the training building at work, to see a doctor I didn’t know about an unsolvable health problem while I still had exposed nerves in my molar.
When we arrived I was handed my medical records & told to wait. Of course I started flipping through them. I discovered that other people’s records were scattered in with mine, including a “whiny Chinese woman” (that’s how the nurse had described her in the notes) who’d been in an accident and was so bruised that half her face looked gangrene and dead, and her ear had fallen off.
The staff kept confusing her with me.
Maybe it was the absurdity of that mistake, or maybe it was the 5 alarms I’d set this morning, but I woke up soon after.
***
Many years ago I read a conversation between a group of folks wih cystic fibrosis about the prevalence of nightmares where their teeth would fall out. As a group, it was a consistent indicator that their lung issues were flaring up.
I doubt a lung infection is my problem, but I think I’ll take my vitamins this morning anyway.
Is it possible you woke up looking for Papa Smurf not alarms? Sounds like your dental history is being confused with Nighthawks.
Try dwelling on something else like a worm on the end of a line or the fact that the whirlpool in your bathtub changes direction when you cross the equator and how do cruise lines explain that to tourists!!!