King with a (Temporary) Crown

The first snow of the season is a truly beautiful thing until you actually have to venture out into it.  It should come as no surprise that I much prefer to sit in my ivory tower on the 5th floor and be mesmerized by the large heavy chunks of white as they descend to the earth below.   Today I will have no such luck.  Today my teeth have no regard for my preferences.

As today is the first snow, I decide that it is occasion enough to dig through my boxes and break out my winter attire.  I normally try to get by on sweatshirts and windbreakers for as long as possible and I suppose this is to prove to the world how badassI am.   Instead, I just end up shivering everywhere I go and getting sick twice by mid-November.  I guess someday I’ll learn my lesson.  In truth, the real reason for this is that I lived in Florida for five years and down there everyone walks around in parkas and mittens the second the temperature drops below 55 and for reasons that have nothing to do withthe weather I never, ever wanted to be associated with Floridians as long as I live.  So I deprive myself of warmth for two months every year.  I guess everyone does something.

I find my knit hat, my gloves, and my scarf.  The first two I am fine with; I have never figured out the last one.  I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to wear a scarf the way the hipsters in my neighborhood wear them, just flung casually around the neck.  I’m not sure how that’s supposed to keep you warm.  I sort of just wrap the whole thing around my head like a mummy, though I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that either.  At least it keeps me warm, but it makes me feel like an idiot.  What I don’t need right now is to go out into the world feeling like an idiot.  But then I’ve never needed a scarf to do that.  Any scarf wearing advice is welcome in the comments section.

Now fully bundled, I leave the house to do one of my least favorite things…leave the house.  My journey will take me ten blocks uptown to Union Square and then over to the West Village, where the streets ignore my preference to be numbered and intersect at right angles, and end with an emergency trip to my absolute least favorite place, the dentist.

I don’t have any kids that I know of, but I understand the feeling of doing your damnedest to take care of something its entire existence only to be be resented and let down later in life.  I have been a stickler for proper dental care since I was young and all I have to show for it is the inability to chew on one side of my mouth and a currently cracked, throbbing, and swollen molar on the other.  I often wonder why my body never filled out in my mid-20’s and I constantly overlook the fact that eating food hurts me in ways most people take for granted.  And it is right about the time I am feeling sorry for myself about all of  this that I step in literally the first puddle I come across, a block from my apartment.  It looked solid to me.  What was I going to do, watch where I was going?  Be more careful in inclement weather?  Please, I was wallowing in self pity.  I don’t have time for all that vigilance.  My right foot is now soaked and freezing, which is a problem as it was one of the two feet I needed to get where I’m going today.

And now is the part of the story where I complain about how I don’t get life and continue to feel sorry for myself.  But given that 2008 is ending in a matter of days, I remember a promise that I made to myself at the beginning of this year that things would be different.  I was lucky to make it out of 2007 alive and I promised myself I would never have another year like that again.  The thing is, if you don’t stand up for yourself and your mental posterity it can get away from you quickly.  Your comfort zone gets violated, the things that you rely on disappear, your tooth throbs, your feet are wet, and the next thing you know you don’t feel that much better about your life than you did at this time last year. 

I’ve always resented the cliche that life is a struggle and nothing is handed to you.  That you have to crawl before you can walk.  Before you can run.  I’ve always resented that I couldn’t just be happy.  That I wasn’t sure that anything would ever make me happy.  But completed my errands in Union Square and making my way to the dentist, my life flashed before my eyes and not just because I ignored the orange hand on the other side of the crosswalk warning me not to plod slowly to the other side of the street.  As an SUV blared its horn at me I realized that I had completely lost my fight.  In my younger years I was an idealist, full of piss and vinegar.  Not happy, but not giving up on the idea that I could be.  Years of right crosses and black eyes, years of blows to the chin with nobody in your corner to stitch your gashes can cause you to throw in the towel.  Take some time off.  Early retirement.  Eight long blocks from knowing whether or not I can eat Christmas dinner, my step begins to ever so slightly spring.  If you want something in life you have to fight for it.  That includes happiness.  Pardon me while I become a cliche. 

I think everyone has a higher opinion of themselves than they should.  Everyone thinks they are a good person and deserve good things.  And maybe I give myself too much credit when I say deep down I’m not a miserable person.  It’s just that I’m generally unimpressed with what life has to offer.  I’ve been waiting to be amazed by something my entire life.  It hasn’t happened and maybe it never will.  But in the meantime I’m building my happiness on small things.  Like the fact that I am a more agile human being than the vast majority of the population.  Seriously, you should see me move in this snow.  I navigate the ice and slush with a grace and agility that parents should be telling thier kids about before putting them to bed.  Even though a quarter inch of wet gross has accumulated on the bottom of my right shoe, I still move past flustered pedestrians at an absurd rate of speed given the conditions.  I am a force of nature, every step drawing me closer to inner peace. 

As it turns out, teeth like years, can be salvaged.  And relatively pain free if you find a good dentist.  I throw another haymaker in the general direction of my brooding dark with the knowledge that I will indeed be able to enjoy Christmas dinner with a set of nearly fully functioning teeth.  I have a temporary crown in my mouth that feels more like a tooth than anything I’ve had in years, with the promise of a permanent one to come after the new year.  It cost me more than I really had, but sometimes you have to dig deep for things like that.  Wallet, soul, teeth, happiness, I don’t know anymore.  As I make my way home, bounding over puddles mere mortals can only hope to find a way around, I have no idea if I can do this.  But I know 2008 was better than 2007 because it had to be.  Next year will be better than this year because I won’t let it not be.