Close to you...
In a fit of nostalgia, Joel recently pulled out a Carpenters CD. In an instant, I'm wisked away to my lanky, child self. I'm wearing headphones, floating a few inches above a too-large, lavender dentist chair in a nitrous oxide haze. The Carpenters' mellow crooning makes grusome reality split off, transporting me to a warm, sunny land where I swim though the air, flying with the bluebirds and butterflies.

"Sing, Sing a Song" brings back the spooky way my childhood dentist would sneak that huge novacaine needle past my line of sight, shake my cheek while rotating the needle for too long. "Yesterday Once More," tastes of that sickening, somewhat metalic spreading numbness as the novacaine begins to take effect. "We've Only Just Begun" reminds me of my tired jaw, aching from the dentist levering himself to pry out a particularly stubborn tooth. Stangely, I'm "On Top of the World" while biting down on a big wad of cotton stuffed into the now-empty socket. They can take my teeth, but not my spirit.

If it weren't for nitrous oxide and the Carpenters on the headphones, I don't know how I would have survived years of "pre-orthodontia" extractions. I've lost 13 teeth to professional extractions, including some baby teeth, 4 wisdom teeth and my lower 6-year molars.

My poor kid is doomed to terrible teeth, though perhaps not the big teeth/small jaw issue that plagued me. I've got the perfect soundtrack, however, when treatment begins.