The World of Dentistry

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The Bartlett pear (called Williams pear in England) is one of the tastiest and juiciest fruit in North American supermarkets. It’s hard to believe that by chewing on this soft delicacy, much to my dismay, I managed to break the filling on one of my lower molars.

Dental problems started to appear about 10,000 years ago, when humans stopped roaming the land to settle in villages and towns. At that time, mankind’s eating habits changed as our ancestors began eating more sugar, a leading cause for cavities.

Could it be that toothaches are God’s curse on the children of Cain for adopting their father’s sedentary living?

Cain was a farmer and his brother Abel was a nomad. Abel sacrificed the firstborns of his cattle to God who seemed to enjoy it. However, the zucchini, carrots and celery Cain offered up weren’t to the Almighty’s taste, maybe because Cain neglected to serve them with ranch dressing.

It took a long time for people to understand tooth decay. In olden times, cavities were thought to be caused by worms. In ancient Egypt, dental malformation in children was treated by feeding skinned and cooked mice to toddlers. In China, cavities were filled with bat dung. In Spain, frequent mouthwash with urine was key to good oral hygiene.

In the Middle Ages, tooth pullers began exercising their trade in public squares, promising their clients painless relief. Of course they were lying through their teeth but it provided great entertainment for crowds who had neither TV nor Internet to kill time. Tooth pullers also removed calluses.

In those days, dentistry and pedicure drank at the same well.

When Renaissance arrived, hairdressers joined the dental trade bandwagon. Noble ladies of Florence could thus have tartar removed from their teeth while getting a perm or having their hair styled.

In the 18th century, Pierre Fauchard, the “father of modern dentistry,” published The Surgeon Dentist in which he recommended the use of heavy metals for tooth fillings. He also endorsed regular mouthwash with urine.

A man collected his own urine in a bottle to use as mouthwash. Beware of unproven personal hygiene advice: it might just be a fad... especially if it’s gross.

Progress cannot be stopped but it sometimes takes a while to occur.

You can understand why I have always had mixed impressions about dental medicine. Should it be considered a science? An art? A technical trade?

With this in mind I began looking for a dentist. I chose a new dental office that had just opened in a strip mall close to where I lived, tucked between a video rental store, a pizza parlor and a realtor’s office.

Doctor Nguyen’s office was new, tidy, tastefully decorated and equipped with the latest technology. The good doctor was a pretty 30 year-old woman who had recently graduated from a Las Vegas dental school, a city that does not readily come to mind when you seek higher education.

I was told however that its dental schools have an excellent reputation.

After her examination, Doctor Nguyen told me that my decayed molar needed a crown but first I had to see a dental surgeon who would lower my gum, raise my jaw and perform root canal surgery. She would make the necessary arrangements for me.

Root canal surgery is a procedure in which the pulp of a damaged tooth is removed with files, reamers, drills and other precision instruments. Although this treatment sounds painful, the Polish surgeon I went to see possessed undeniable skills.

He first gave me a solid local anesthetic and then put on a blaring Johnny Cash CD to distract me from the abominations he was performing in my mouth using sharp objects.

I did not feel a thing.

When I saw Doctor Nguyen again, she worked for several minutes on my molar before saying: “This won’t do.”

She led me to her office. My mouth was numb from the anesthetic and I was still wearing the necessary bib that dentists tie around the neck of their patients while they intervene.

Doctor Nguyen turned on a giant screen on which I could see the digitized x-ray image of my mouth.

“You see, I can’t install a crown because your teeth are out of alignment, specifically here, here and here as well as on all this side of your mouth,” she said pointing at teeth with her laser pen.

“This is what I suggest: I will make a set of braces to adjust your teeth. You will wear it in your mouth for six to twelve months, long enough for your teeth to be redressed. This treatment will cost about $1,800. Your parents would have done well to take you to a dentist when you were a child.”

I refrained from telling her about my grandfather who lived the last 30 years of his life with only three teeth in his mouth and who saw a blacksmith when he had a toothache.

“Then I will install crowns on the teeth of your lower jaw which will no longer be aligned with those of the upper jaw. It’s about twelve crowns and it will cost $15,000 to $18,000. We can start the treatment next week.”

I asked Doctor Nguyen for a few days to think about it.

“You know, many people would not hesitate one moment to mortgage their house to receive such a treatment,” she said.

“Oh! I believe you!” I replied. “However, just to satisfy my curiosity, how much would it cost to have all my teeth pulled out to replace them with dentures?”

“About $10,000 but I wouldn’t recommend it,” she answered.

I thanked her, paid for the treatment I already had received and left her office, dizzy from novocaine and the astronomical amounts that she had quoted me for fixing my teeth.

A friend suggested I seek a second opinion and recommended a Swedish dentist for whom her sister worked as a dental assistant.

So I went to see Doctor Svensson, a middle-aged lady who looked in my mouth mumbling “I see, I see...”

Then she asked me:

“Is your dentist young? Her office and equipment, are they all computerized?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Dear sir, I think I can fit you with a crown. Would you prefer gold or porcelain? I believe a gold crown would look good on you. A gold crown costs $900, a porcelain crown, $1,200.”

“Gold would be nice,” I replied sheepishly promising myself to light a candle to Saint John Maynard Keynes who suggested the gold standard be replaced with the porcelain standard at the Bretton-Woods Conference in 1944.

John Maynard Keynes was a British economist who played a key role in the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreement in New Hampshire. As a result of this agreement, the gold standard was dropped. The porcelain standard is my invention. If you exchange your money for porcelain, you will be disappointed.

Two weeks later I was proudly wearing my new gold crown. It felt good and I was relieved that I did not have to rinse my mouth with urine.

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The Biggest Swimming Pool in the World

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Superlatives are words used to qualify the absolute top or bottom in quality or quantity. How we enjoy talking about the wealthiest man in the world, the thinnest tablet or the most crooked political leader!

I guess these words were invented to make us forget how common our ordinary lives can be.

As I was discussing superlatives with colleagues, it made me think of something that happened while I was still married.

My wife was born to drive a car. She just loved to take to the road. She used any excuse to jump into the car and travel aimlessly looking for something new to see.

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon my wife and I decided to take a ride in the countryside.

My wife was at the wheel. Fields, groves and cattle were going by the left and right of the car. I was daydreaming, thinking how great life was and how wonderful it was to be alive.

We came to a village famous for its cheese curds factory and decided to stop and sample the local delicacy.

Cheese curds were invented in Canada in the early 1960s by dairy farmers trying to bypass quota regulations. Easy to make, this fat, salty, slightly processed cheddar cheese quickly became popular and gave birth to the infamous “poutine,” a meal made of cheese and french fries topped with hot gravy.

We bought our cheese and as my wife was admiring the quaint shop, I read a story in the local newspaper about one of the area attractions, “the biggest natural swimming pool in the world.”

As soon as I mentioned it to my wife, she wanted to see it since it was only a few miles away.

We found the “swimming pool” at the end of an unnamed dirt road. The pool was made of three communicating stone basins at the foot of a large rock where a trickle of cold water was flowing from a spring. The bottom of each basin had been painted aquamarine to give the impression of an artificial swimming pool. All in all, the lagoon was much smaller in size than an olympic swimming pool.

It had been a hot summer with less than average rainfall. The stream was not a bubbly jet of water, just a slow dribble. The smallest basin was empty and the deepest contained nothing more than three feet of sticky water, green with algae proliferating under the warm sun.

This did not seem to bother the numerous children who were noisily splashing about in the water while their parents, slumped into lounging chairs around the pool, distractedly kept an eye on their progeny.

I told my wife this seemed to be the perfect place to catch a dermatosis that would make these poor kids’ skin tougher than the hide of Big Joe, the largest alligator of Florida that we had seen near Fort Myers.

With more than one million American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in the world this species is far from being endangered as it haunts the southeastern United States. The word “alligator” is derived from el lagarto (the lizard), the name given to the reptile by the first Spanish explorers.

“You always see the bad side of things! Look at how much fun they’re having!” she said smiling and waving at the children.

At that moment, a man with a worn-out Elvis Presley T-shirt and sporting a dirty pair of khaki shorts with a dangerously open fly came to meet us.

— Welcome to our little paradise on Earth! Are you looking for a place to park your camping trailer?

— Erm... No, we just came to see the biggest swimming pool in the world, I said before being interrupted by my wife.

— Oh! There’s a campground? Can we see it?

— Yes, behind those trees, answered the man pointing towards a thinly-wooded area. I can give you a tour if you want.

— Oh! That would be delightful! Shall we go my darling? said my wife to me as she took the arm of our improvised guide.

Against my will I followed them through an underbrush planted with birch and aspen trees.

A lacing road was forming a loop of the campground. Trailers were parked along the road close to each other, most of them permanently. Some seemed to have been there for decades.

At the centre of the loop, a large porcelain urinal decorated with lights and plastic flowers was acting as a grotto for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The saint was standing in this makeshift shrine with her open arms, looking discouraged as if she declined any responsibility for the compound she found herself in.

Our guide was explaining the intricacies of camping to my wife as she obediently listened and asked questions from time to time. The man was so happy to have found an audience that he was rocking on his heels, a nervous tick that, to my dismay, was causing the broken fly of his shorts to open even more.

He then invited us for coffee in his trailer. My wife accepted although I was not keen on the invitation and we walked towards the fellow’s mobile home.

The trailer looked like our guide: common and unkempt. As the guy started to fight to open the jammed door, the broken fly zipper of his shorts gaped even more and, to my disgust, I saw “Elvis” leaving the building.

I had had enough. I took my wife by the arm, thanked our host and, pretending we had a long ride home we left this place where I had seen everything I wished I had never seen.

Swimming pools have been popular since antiquity, the oldest one was found in Sindh, Pakistan. In England, public swimming pools appeared in the mid-19th century. However, nobody has ever boasted of having the emptiest swimming pool in the world.

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Hospital Diaries VII: The Sweet-Smelling Ward

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next. 

Paralysis is a terrible impediment to autonomy. Not only are you not able to move but also you cannot get dressed, wash or go to the bathroom by yourself.

In the Gurney Hall I had to let go of my shirt and pants and I felt humiliated wearing nothing but briefs under the ridiculous patient smock with the wide opening in the back.

You see, clothes not only serve to keep you warm and decent, they also symbolize your social status. In a hospital this hierarchy is quite obvious: doctors wear white smocks and a tie, nurses and orderlies wear pastel-coloured scrubs, and patients lie half-naked at the bottom of the social ladder.

The social ladder is nowhere ever more present than in a fire brigade. Here a firefighter is climbing the social ladder in an attempt to become lead firefighter, a dangerous position with more responsibilities. Exactly why is a mystery to me.

I was sharing my embarrassment with my friend Lucide as she was pushing me in my wheelchair back to my room at the Emergency Overflow.

“You know, when you’re in a hospital, you have to give up your pride,” she said.

Unfortunately, my vanity prevented me from appreciating her wisdom.

The next day, I squirmed for an hour in my stretcher, finally managing to put on a pair of jeans. I could not button them because of my swollen and numb hands but I did zip them up.

As I was basking in this accomplishment, I looked up and saw a tall blonde woman who had been observing me for awhile, standing at the foot of my gurney.

Although she was smartly dressed and not wearing a white smock, I knew she was a doctor simply because she appeared out of nowhere like all the other doctors who came to see me in the hospital.

“Good morning sir. I am Doctor Sveta Tiplova,” she said with a strong Russian accent. “How are you feeling today?”

“Quite well thank you. Are you a neurologist?”

“No, I’m a physiatrist and I’m here to assess your condition.”

I thought I heard “psychiatrist” and for a moment I had a vision of the Soviet Gulag and the snowy Siberian steppes. I feared this new doctor was sent by the “Seagull,” the doctor who thought I was faking my illness, as a first step to having me committed.

Seeing my distress, Doctor Tiplova explained that she was a specialist of the musculoskeletal system. She then proceeded to thoroughly examine my hands, my arms, my shoulders, my neck and my knees.

Physiatry, a medical discipline that became popular during WWII, is about restoring the bones and muscles connexion after an injury otherwise than through a silly Bible camp song.

She seemed puzzled but I could see that she was carefully considering my ailment. She finally said:

“Listen, for what it’s worth I am going to submit your case to the Internal Medicine Department. They might be able to recommend some tests to establish a proper diagnosis.”

After she left I realized that medical science was as much in the dark about the nature of my illness as I was, although it did not have to cope with the pain and paralysis.

For the time being however, Doctor Tiplova’s visit had an instant benefit for me. For her examination, an orderly had moved me to my wheelchair and I was no longer lying down on my stretcher.

I had not been to the bathroom since I arrived at the hospital several days before. My friend Lucide had brought me prunes when she came to visit and I was beginning to feel their effect on my bowels.

Plums (prunus domestica) were introduced to the western world during the Crusades and offered as a perk to crusaders (whence the expression “plum reward”) who left their family and possessions behind to massacre Moors in the Holy Land. Once dried, they are called prunes and can be preserved for a long time. Their laxative properties are legend.

I rolled my wheelchair to the toilet, put the brakes on and painstakingly lifted myself up by leaning on the chair’s armrests. With great effort I advanced the three steps to the bowl and collapsed on its seat.

At once my intestines began to void. Oh! The joy I felt when I realized that at least this part of my body was fully functional! My hands, my arms, my legs and my neck may have given up on me but at this time I swear I was in Paradise!

However, after I was done and had wiped away the traces of my deed I was faced with another challenge. How was I to get up from the toilet? There were holding bars on the wall but my arms did not have the strength to lift me up.

I realized I would have to ask an orderly to help me get up from this awkward position.

There was a chain on the wall with a sign that said “EMERGENCY” in red letters. Humbly I pulled on it and after ten minutes an orderly showed up.

“Oh! Poor sir! You shouldn’t have tried to go to the bathroom by yourself! We could have brought you a commode chair!”

Commode chairs, such as this padded specimen, were popular in the 18 and 19 centuries before the advent of sewers. To each his own, using a commode chair is not a pleasant experience yet it is better than relieving yourself in a diaper.

He tried to pull me up but the bathroom was too narrow. He left to get another orderly and together they managed to make me stand up. The second orderly pulled up my trousers, buttoned them and zipped them up.

Nothing can wound your pride as much as having several people witnessing the embarrassing situation you are in.

As a consolation, I thought of Dante’s Divine Comedy where the author, while travelling through Hell, met an acquaintance who had been condemned to swim for eternity in a sea of excrements because of his pride.

Dante Alighieri is the Italian poet who established the Tuscan dialect as the standard Italian language. The Divine Comedy recalls his climbing the social ladder through the nine circles of Hell, the nine rings of Purgatory and the nine celestial bodies of Paradise. The journey is the reward indeed. Illustration by Gustave Doré, Public Domain

Once I was sitting in my wheelchair, I asked if I could go outside to have a smoke.

“That will not be possible sir,” said the orderly. “We have to put you back on your gurney. We found a permanent room for you in another ward and somebody will take you there shortly.”

As the gurney attendant was rolling my stretcher towards the elevator I was rejoicing because I believed that being transferred to a permanent room meant I was now a legitimate patient. Doctors would soon find the nature of my ailment, prescribe the appropriate treatment and I could go back home.

Alas! When the attendant pushed open the doors of the general medicine ward where I was to stay for the next several weeks a poignant stench of excrements assailed my nostrils.

I thought I was being taken to Dante’s first circle of Hell to be punished for my pride.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries VIII: Lying in the bed I made

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Hospital Diaries II: The Firefly

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This is part of a series. You can begin at Part I and follow the link at the end of each installment to read the next.

Every time I see a doctor, it seems he ends up making recommendations that are totally unrelated to the purpose of my visit.

I have gotten used to the persistent advice to stop smoking but I just can’t stand it when I’m told to lose weight.

That’s exactly what the good doctor who diagnosed a sprain on my knee said to me. I left his office annoyed but resolved to follow his advice if only to stop receiving unwanted suggestions.

The road to slenderness is simple: follow a balanced diet. Forget about gyms and fitness centres. Sure they will tone your body and build muscles but you will really need to exercise a lot to lose weight. And the more you exercise, the more you risk getting injured.

According to a Canadian study, 40.2% of people aged 20 to 64 who were injured in Canada in 2009-2010 did so practising sports, exercising or walking. Only 16.5% suffered from work-related injuries. This may mean that Canadians are either smart workers or simply lazy.

In Canada, the key to balanced eating is found in Canada’s Food Guide published by Health Canada. This system is based on four essential food groups: fruits and vegetables, grain products, dairy products and alternatives, and meat and other sources of proteins.

The Food Guide explains what constitutes a typical serving for each food group and how many servings males and females need according to their age. If you keep a record of how much you eat, you will lose weight quickly without risking your health.

That’s what I did as my knee was failing me. I lost 40 pounds in three months. Now I only needed to lose another 15 pounds to reach a healthy weight and turn my doctor speechless.

However, I was not worrying about dieting the morning I woke up paralysed in bed.

I was in a bad predicament but I found out I had an unexpected advantage: I had a full bladder.

Despite the pain and because of the urge, after about 30 minutes I managed to move my head, then my fingers, my wrists, my elbows and my legs until I laboriously sat on the edge of the bed.

I relieved myself in my homemade bedpan and then assessed my situation. My twisted knee was not the issue anymore. I could no longer move easily because I was sore all over. It would take a miracle for me to get out of my apartment by myself. My fridge was getting emptier by the day but worse, I was almost out of cigarettes.

I found myself in the middle of the proverbial tunnel looking for a light.

As I was moping about my condition, the phone rang. It was my friend Lucide who, worried, was calling to enquire about me.

I told her about my disablement and that I was running out of supplies. Right away she offered to run some errands for me and said she would stop by that night after work.

In the darkness, a firefly was shining her light to help me find the way out.

The firefly or lightning bug is an insect of the lampyridæ family. There are more than 2,000 species of fireflies. Some females lightning bugs do not fly and look like their larvæ. They are called “glow worms.”

When Lucide arrived at my place carrying several bags of groceries she was struck with consternation, not because she was seeing her friend bedridden and disabled but because of the sorry condition of my apartment.

I had been confined to my bed for several weeks and household cleaning was no longer a priority. Dirty dishes were piling up on the kitchen counter. The floor was covered with objects that I could not pick up because I was unable to bend over. A heap of dirty laundry gathered in a corner of my bedroom and dust was taking over my lodgings.

“What a pigsty! exclaimed Lucide while dropping her bags on my bed. How can you live in such a mess?”

« Erm... Did you bring me cigarettes?”

“They're in the bag,” she answered distractedly while inspecting the jumble in my apartment. “Do you have any garbage bags?”

“In the cupboard, underneath the sink,” I answered while looking for cigarettes in one of the grocery bags.

Lucide disappeared in the kitchen while I tried to unwrap a cigarette pack with my numb fingers. It seemed I had lost all the manual skills I once had.

Lucide came back to the room with a garbage bag and as she saw my shaky hands fighting with the cigarette pack, she cried out:

“What’s with your hands? Look at your knuckles! They’re all red and swollen! This is much worse than a twisted knee, you must see a doctor! Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital!”

With great difficulty I began to dress. I had lost a lot of weight and my clothes did not fit me anymore. I was in a bad shape and I felt weak and distressed.

It took me almost half an hour to manage to get up with Lucide’s help. When I took a first step leaning on my walking cane, it felt as though I had no kneecaps, like my thigh bones were resting directly on my shin bones. I almost passed out from the excruciating pain.

I live on the second floor of an apartment building. As I began to climb down the 14-step stairwell, AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was playing in my head and I had to sit down on the second step to gather my wits.

Highway to Hell is a song about the gruelling conditions of constant touring. Six months after its release, Bon Scott, who sang on the original recording, was found dead at 33 in the back of a Renault 5 after a night of heavy drinking. Show business is a mother who enjoys eating its young.

Finally, I was outside. I had been locked in my apartment for a month and winter had settled in. It was cold and the snow was cracking under my steps. In a last effort, I sat down in Lucide’s car as she started the engine.

I was on my way to the hospital, a harbour for the unfortunates of the world.

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To be continued in Hospital Diaries III: Incubation

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Hospital Diaries I : A Gout-Ridden Wretch

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Ouch! I was awoken by a shooting pain in the middle of the night.

For the fourth time in 30 years I was having a gout attack. By now I knew the story: the sharp pain in the joint at the base of my big toe would fade away after I applied ice packs and took muscle relaxants. This meant I would be lounging in bed for a few days while rereading the works of Guy de Maupassant.

After three days, the swelling had subsided but the pain in my foot remained and I was unable to walk without limping. It was not unbearable so I went back to work where a lengthy report on crystallizing the Canadian public health system through the infusion of additional government funds was waiting to be edited.

“Gout? What’s this? You think you’re Charles Dickens?” joked my friend Aaron when he saw me at the office.

I tried to explain that gout was not some outdated distemper and that its occurrence was on the rise in North America but my colleague was no longer listening: instead he was focusing on the coffee machine sputtering a reluctant espresso into his cup.

The espresso machine is believed to have been invented in 1884 by Angelo Moriondo, in Torino, Italy. The drink gained in popularity worldwide in the 1980’s so much that automatic dispensing machines such as this one are now common in North American public institutions.

Weeks went by, I was still hobbling and to make matters worse, one of my knees failed. I now had an even clumsier gait. I went to a doctor who told me upon quickly examining my swollen knee that it was sprained. He recommended two weeks of rest and to avoid putting weight on my leg.

So I took the last two weeks of annual leave I had left and went back to read Guy de Maupassant’s tales.

As this forced vacation was coming to an end and the time to return to work was approaching, my knee was still hurting. With the help of a walking cane, I went back to the clinic where the doctor summarily felt my puffy knee to immediately declare:

“This is a splendid case of a sprained knee with torn ligaments! You must get to bed my friend! Didn’t I tell you before to get some rest?”

“But I’ve been at home for the last two weeks!”

“In bed? No, no, my friend, stay in bed with your leg raised and apply ice packs four times a day. I am prescribing you some muscle relaxants to ease the pain.”

With the prescription in my hand, I called a cab to take me to the drugstore while realizing to my displeasure that, having used up all my annual vacations, I had to take unpaid leave to attend to my health.

The cab driver was talkative and seeing my cane asked me what happened to me.

“Oh, it’s nothing, I just twisted my knee” I said.

“You should stop smoking!” he replied.

Not impressed by the man’s popular wisdom I was stunned by the effectiveness of the advertising campaign put together by the Government, the health system and the pharmaceutical industry to blame all worldly problems on smoking.

So I went back to bed, determined to heal my costly lame knee. I would get up once a day to use the bathroom and prepare some food. My meals were simple: sandwiches, fresh fruits and vegetables, cereal, cheese, social tea biscuits and water.­­­ I ate lying down. With a razor blade, I cut up a two-litre soda bottle to use as a bedpan to avoid standing up.

The polyethylene terephthalate bottle was invented in 1973 by Nathaniel Wyeth, an American engineer, for pressurized liquids such as soda pop. Carbonation is weak in human urine. However it is surprising how many people use such bottles to relieve themselves when nature calls.

After a week this idleness was taking its toll. My back was aching so much that it was becoming a challenge to sit up in bed or to get up.

I could pull myself out of bed with a strap I tied to my bedroom door while I pushed myself up with my elbow resting on a stool. Every day walking from my bedroom to the bathroom and the kitchen became more difficult.

One morning I woke up laying on my back with my arms extended, completely paralysed.

I was sure this was the first time in the history of modern medical science that a gout attack turned into a sprained knee spreading to the upper body and limbs of an individual.

This is when I realized I needed some serious help.

To be continued in Hospital Diaries II : The Firefly.

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Geoff’s Beard

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When people ask why I have a beard, I feel like they are asking why my eyes are brown. So I always give the same answer: I have worn a beard since I was a toddler and I even have a photograph to prove it.

The author at age 6. Despite being obviously talented, I never made it as a Photoshop artist...

Alas! This is far from the truth and Straight from the Bowels is the perfect platform to set the record straight. Let me tell you the story.

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Years ago I lived in a small town in northern Canada; not the Great White North, but the Average Grey North nevertheless.

It was a miserable autumn night: cold, with relentless rain coming down furiously, trying to decide whether it should turn to snow or not.

I worked as a caretaker in a youth shelter, helping troubled teenagers cross over to adulthood. You know the story: kids having problems with drugs, alcohol, prostitution, petty crimes, and loneliness. Sometimes teenagers came to us on their own, sometimes it was their parents who would bring them saying: “Please take him/her, I don’t know what to do anymore!”

Often I felt like we should have been taking care of the parents.

That night I was alone. The five rooms of the old house were empty. I was reading in the kitchen by the woodstove which I was using before winter to save furnace oil.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door: it was two policemen with a young man, about thirty, dressed poorly, wet as a rag and holding a backpack in his hands.

– This “gentleman” came to the police station and asked us to keep him overnight. We’re not a hostel and he has no money. We could have left him in the streets but we would have had to arrest him later in the night for loitering so we brought him here since we know you sometimes accommodate people.

The logic used in the police force sometimes escapes me and I answered:

– This is not a hostel either but I will take this man as a guest since it is just wrong to leave anybody outside in such weather.

The two officers looked at each other, relieved they would not have to make an arrest, write a report and maybe stand as witnesses in front of a judge for an insignificant case.

When the two cops were gone, the young man humbly thanked me and told me his name was Roland.

“Welcome Roland. Take off your coat, put your bag in the corner and come and get warm near the stove. Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?” I added while giving him a towel so he could dry off.

I warmed up a big pot of stew I had on the electric range and served a generous helping to my guest who began wolfing it down as I made some tea.

While he was eating, Roland told me he had been hitchhiking to a small town 150 miles away to begin a new job that the halfway house had found him. He had just finished serving several years in jail for various offenses and wanted to start a new life, away from the city, hoping people would give him a second chance.

I have nothing against second chances nor third or fourth if necessary. Actually I would be at loss to know when a person should be considered beyond help.

Roland and I talked for some time, and then I took him to his room and wished him a good night.

When I got up in the morning, my guest had already gone, without a word, without a note. I put a log in the woodstove, made coffee and went to freshen up.

After my shower, I was getting ready to shave when I realized my electric razor was gone. In its place there was a shaving brush, a disposable razor and a can of shaving cream.

The shaving brush can be traced to 18th century France where it is called a blaireau (badger) since the bristles are often made from the hair of that animal. Although at the time it was considered a status symbol to own such a brush, I find shaving using a straight or disposable razor and a shaving brush a tedious process.

Some people will say that the man I had kindly sheltered and fed ran away discreetly after committing his petty theft.

I would rather think that it was the Almighty or the Great Goddess who was sending me a sign. Or maybe it was the Great Vishnu himself – or one of his avatars – who came down from Heaven to take away my razor and make me understand it was time for me to rise above the ranks of the beardless.

That day I started to grow a beard. I have no regrets since wearing a beard is one of the few things I do well.

The Indian god Vishnu as a child is sitting with two large jars of shaving soap he probably stole from people he wanted to grow a beard.

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