http://cooloring.com/img/kids+in+swimming+pool+coloring+pages/


Memoir


 

Angela Fields

 

English 2280 Memoir

 

9/9/2016

 

                Marco Polo

 

I grew up in a small town. I know that sounds cliché but to give you an idea how small, in the 2010 census Allen, Maryland had a population of 210 people. Although if you go to Zipcode.org which goes by the 2000 census, only 5 years after the following event would have taken place, it states that the population was 38. It even goes as far to break down Allen demographically. According to the census, there were 20 males to 18 females and 32 whites to 6 blacks. Needless to say, it was not easy finding neighborhood kids to play with growing up. However, despite the small numbers of the town, I was very lucky in the fact that among our neighbors down the lane there were 2 kids. One, Asia, was 3 years older than I, which was a lot back then but with our need to have friends we overlooked the gap for the sake of companionship. The other was her brother, Marvin, who was 6 years older than I and about to graduate high school. This made him pretty much an adult to us but because he was a boy, we teased him relentlessly about how much more mature we were, since we all know girls mature faster than boys.

 

On one of the many summer days, the shingles gave off wavy lines of heat. The buzzards circled the fields surrounding our old farmhouse whose corners either sank or lifted from the decades of weight and warping. Our cider block pantry on the southwest side, split from the ground to the roof from the houses settling strain, crudely patched up with quick cement to keep the cold winter air from freezing the water pump inside, though the termite infested wooden door gave little resistance. An addition to the house that was not on the original blueprint, that was tacked on along with the rest of the plumbing and electricity many decades after being built.

 

If that doesn’t indicate how old the house is, it was built and paid for with five gold coins. I always wanted to get a flag made with five coins and our family crest (If we even have one) on it and dub the place of my birth “Five-coin Farm” and demand a toll to come down the lane, since our house was the last and only stop after a good quarter mile stretch. Although if the farm was still as large as it had once been generations back, being nearly 800 acres, I bet I could charge one hell of a toll! But now two farms, totaling 100 acres, the one where this took place is 60 acres.

 

On this day, the cicadas sounded from the lines of trees surrounding the fields of those acres, in all directions, making their noise in turn in the summer heat. Being dismissed from the inside activities of Lisa Frank sticker counting, organizing and collection-growth-contemplating or playing Mario on the Super Nintendo our mouths, me and my sister Jessie’s, would thirst for a real adventure and my mind came up with a brilliant idea.

 

“Be back before dinner,” our stepmother would say which meant, “be back or else your father may eat it all…” before retreating inside to likely paint or remove paint from her toenails, while watching Guiding Light or some other soap opera. The pole shed buzzed with bumblebees, while dirt dopers made their short tunnels in the fine sand that a medium breeze could easily collapse. Our bicycles were ready by the wood splitter and its trophy-stacked-wood-walls beside it, made from falling trees from the back fields. The heat only somewhat daunting, we peddled down the lane with legs burning between unshaded spots to the neighbors. Sitting in front of their trailer, with blueberry Kool-Aid popsicles, Asia was having her coconut-oil scented hair braided by her mom who was also adding beads and I asked if they would like to go for a swim in the above-ground pool at my house. The plastic pool had water that was half evaporated and full of drowned insects. Its waters this late in the season would be closer to bath water than the cool pond water it originated from (brought by a real fire truck, because our poor little pump couldn’t handle the volume), and wasn’t much, but it still beat the heat of this day.

 

    She looked interested but her mom piped up saying, “Don’t you know what happens to our hair when it gets wet, girl?” I didn’t. I looked at Jessie, at a loss. I hoped she would be quick to come up with an excuse. But then her mom continued, grumbling not paying us any mind, only the knots in Asia’s hair, “and after all this hard work,” she said pulling a little hard on the braid causing my friend to wince.

 

Asia protested, “I won’t get it wet, I promise Momma!”

 

But her mom wasn’t having it. “I bet you didn’t even ask your folks, girl…What did they say?”

 

I lied trying to sound convincing, “Well, my step mother doesn’t mind but my dad's at work so we didn’t ask him.” She would give us incredulous looks but waved us off after finishing Asia’s hair and likewise told her to be back for supper. We asked Marvin if he would join us, but the basketball game on the TV demanded his full attention and no manner of bribe would tear him away. He was, after all, getting a scholarship for the sport and didn’t have time to play games in a pool.

 

    We hurried along, me, Jessie and Asia, Asia hinting, “before her mom changed her mind” and walked our bikes back down the lane (Asia didn’t own a bike). We were happy to be able to do something other than catch frogs, lose basketball matches to Marvin, make ships out of seed pods to float down the creek or look at advertisements from spam magazines meant for a much older, much richer audience.

 

Yard full of crabgrass and prickers, we neared my house, which was covered with asbestos shingles, green on three sides and white on another. On the white side, in the topmost window, above the pump house, a flag draped barely recognizable, full of tears and burns from years of summer sun, yet kept faint shades of red, white and blue crossed lines of stars only visible when focused on. And though the pool awaited, I decided to make my story to Asia’s mom legitimate, even if a little late. I went inside and asked my stepmother if Asia could go swimming with me and my sister. She thought for a moment blowing on a fresh coat of nail polish and sighed. “Don’t let your father know,” she said, and this seemed very odd to me for moment, but shrugged it off as just another invisible button that could be pushed that would make him angry. Asia was lucky; her father wasn't around anymore so she never had to worry about stuff like that.

 

“Ok!” I said relieved that I was given permission and was fine with keeping it a secret.

 

The sounds of Marco Polo and the telltale ripples sprung splashes of retreat, laughter filled the rest of that summer afternoon. After we had burned to cherries and parted ways, my dad came home, a bit grumpy after a long day of work as usual, but expected, saying he was too tired today to play catch. Then we all sat at the dinner table, full of holes from mischievous forks when dad wasn't looking, just like his fork, inching to our full plates of vulnerable food when we weren’t looking, did the casual topic of what we had done all day come up. It wasn’t until that moment, that I found out I had somehow done a really bad thing. Jessie, who had not been with us during the bargain me and my stepmother had struck, was eager to tell him what had taken place that day. He seemed a new sort of angry at the news Asia had come over to swim and when I asked why, he only grumbled using derogatory terms, even commenting on the oil that would be, “sitting on the top of the water in the pool forever.” I protested that Asia hadn’t even gotten her hair that wet, but he said he didn’t want to talk about it any further and she was not to be invited over to swim anymore. Although this was the first time my father and I argued about this, it was far from the last. I just stood there confused but simply put it out of my mind this time after thinking well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. She is my friend and I think I will go back over there tomorrow. The night went on as usual with the TV playing till early morning inside while outside, cricket’s chirped and tiny flashes flowed in the fields and tree canopies, mirroring the summer night skies.

 


Event Essay


Angela Fields                    

                                                       Consolation Prize

Having gotten braces when I was younger, was worth it. You see, I was one of those kids that had my thumb always in my mouth, because it couldn’t get lost, like a pacifier could. And to go with that, let's complete the image, because I was also like that kid, Linus on Charlie Brown, that had a blanket. The kind of kid you would see scratch out, scream out and cry out all day, if the blanket was taken. Or even washed in my case, because it was the smell that was comforting, since that tattered, holey thing sure didn’t keep me warm. Because of this, my teeth were the snaggly sort, that you associate with backwater inbred hillbillies, monsters, and British people. Braces fixed all that, though I loathed every moment of having them. I’m not sure if it was the teasing you normally get when you have them, glasses, pimples, or cloths that didn’t fit, which I had all the above, or the fact that they would create sores in my mouth and made it so I couldn’t have gum, some candies and corn on the cob. Whatever it was, I hated them for all of it, which may be why I avoid the dentist, if I can.

On this occasion, however, I conceded that this new pain would only increase if I didn’t go, and so I did. A filling had broken off, and though it hadn’t hurt at first, it began to, right before I was to begin college again. It was like a mini road worker had climbed into my mouth, with his mini sledgehammer, hoping to drill his way through the side of my face. And so, I scheduled an appointment.

After the checkup to see how bad it was, the dentist in Utah thought a root canal would be the best course.  Knowing the cost, and not knowing the recovery time, with the mountains of school work that were ahead of me, I had hoped to hold off until Christmas holiday. This idea would have allowed me to go to see the dentist my sister works for, back in Maryland, who specializes in root canals. One week later, that mini road worker hit an electric wire, and my whole head began to throb. The choice was no longer mine. It’s like you don’t know how good you have it with your body, until a part of it decides it doesn’t like you anymore. And it decides to end things violently. Then you wonder what happened; where did I go wrong…You think about the good times when you weren’t in pain, and wonder if it will be normal like that ever again.

I had watched the little animated video of the procedure for root canals and crowns, but I knew it couldn’t be as easy as plucking a piece of hair from inside my tooth, filling it with putty and gently tapping on a perfectly fitting tooth-like replica. But if I had really thought about it before that day, I may have been a bit more prepared. Rushing on my bike from an environmental club meeting with two classes before it, I was already a bit frazzled, before reaching my appointment with the dentist. Nerves and/or anxiety about an event, tends to get me chattery, blurting out any question that floats through my head.

“Will they need to put me under for this? Will I be able to function later or will I be pretty much out for the rest of the day? How long is the procedure normally? Will they need to use laughing gas?” Stuff like that were the things I asked the girl that could have been a high-school student, for all I knew, before I had a seat. After all the paperwork had been signed, likely a waiver of some kind, I noticed I was the only patient waiting and sat down to wait for them to call me back. The TV seemed to be on a loop, showing HD shots of various animals, as if to say, “At least you don’t have as many teeth as I do to worry about.” The operation or procedure of a root canal is deceptively named. Tooth killing, tooth drilling, or nerve extracting, would perhaps be a better name for what occurred.

I was lead to a room that was more like a cubical than a room, because the fourth wall needed to classify it as a room was not even an arm's length island that held the tools they were about to use. I remember wishing for a bit more privacy feeling vulnerable, even before sitting down. Had I been younger I would have really wanted my blanket right about then. They sat me in a chair likely designed for maximum comfort, because little to nothing is once the procedures begin, and pulled out the x-ray that was in the wall.  I asked them how much it cost, still with nervous thoughts going through my head. They gave a short laugh, sticking something in my mouth, positioning it around the tooth they would be working on and simply said, “a lot.” I then thought about the bill I would be getting after they had finished. A grand total of $1505.75, because of course my insurance wouldn’t cover dental. Then I heard the small beeping sound. They came back, looked over the black and white image of my tooth and began to prep for the next part. They put on gloves and masks that fully covered their faces. I could only see the doctors one eye, since the other had a magnifying glass or something with a light on it, but could still make out the apprentices’, which was only covered with what looked like workshop glasses. Then they began.

They numbed that side of my mouth and began to clean out my tooth, with tools that smelt of metal and mouthwash. Occasionally, I would jerk from a sudden jolt of pain. The dentist would appear startled, and a bit cautious to proceed, almost like he expected to be punched in the face. Now I understand why the dentistry profession may hold some of the higher suicide rate, I thought. It goes beyond no one ever looks forward to seeing them, but probably the constant fear they may have the pain they cause to others, may in fact cause someone to just deck them.

They constantly asked if I’m “OK,” but I could only make an odd sound, with my mouth forced open and slight nods. I wondered if they had to take a course to be able to interpret things people say when they are like this, because it seems they never just ask the simple yes or no questions, besides that one. It's always, “What plans do you have for the weekend?” or “What classes are you taking?” or “How's your family doing, haven’t seen them in a while.” When they realize, you aren’t really able to have a conversation with them, they may go on with a casual one between themselves, trying to lighten the mood. They talked about a wedding the assistant was not looking forward to going to, and she explained it was because it was a high-end wedding with a low-invite count, which is to improve the quality for each attending. And there I was thinking: Wow, I would LOOOve to be somewhere that my host had spent an arm and a leg to have me attend.  Just to give me the best time possible so I could enjoy a celebration with them. Instead of there, in that dental chair, where I was paying away my savings to have someone torture me.

You always hear the stories about how someone had their tooth removed and they lost their hearing, or the pain never went away.  Like the story my boyfriend told me, about someone he knew in boot camp, that had wisdom teeth removed. Because they hit a delicate nerve, damaging it, the guy had an uncontrollable twitch ever since. But then again, maybe these are like urban myths people just say, because going to the dentist is normally never “fun/enjoyable,” and so people just like to pick on those that have to go. But then again, maybe not. Maybe I should have done more research on the matter, before I went. What did the waiver I signed before sitting down, say again?...

They talked about the Utes game that night, predicting to get a decisive win, while I just prayed I would be able to eat hard foods again. I knew they were trying to help me get my mind off it, since I am sure my eyes were as wide as they could get, with all the tools they brought in and out of my sight. They used a lot of numbers, like “that’s a 20 or 21,” and “that doesn’t quite look like a 25,” talking in code maybe. If I had to guess, I would say they were talking about drill size. Smart. Otherwise, it would have sounded more like this: “we will have to use the bigger drill, because it’s really down in there,” and “do you mind sucking all that blood and bone fragment out,” but instead simply said “suction.” But back to the game, I thought to myself, trying not to decode too much, and wondered if this dentist used football to get out a bit of aggression. His voice definitely had a trained calm to it, being that this person was drilling into my skull. But his eagerness to go to this game and others was clear, so that must be it.

I started to imagine my mouth as that football game. My teeth some of the players, with hard helmets being brutalized. The one they are working on just being tackled, and its helmet knocked off. The drills, needles, fingers, spit-suction-straw-thing, mirror, and God knows what else, they were sticking in there, as the offensive team. And my poor tongue, the quarterback, who was continually dodging and weaving trying not to get pinned, fending off the tools charging my mouth as the defensive plays. Even the tarp-like thing they put around the tooth they were working on, looked like an upside-down umbrella protruding from my mouth, that they call a “raincoat,” was green as the field. But I cringed thinking of the opposing team's goal, which lay deep on the other side of it…

They continued to grind, shave, and plug my aching tooth, looking over the x rays, saying how I had small nerves, but had four, with some being pronged, whereas most people only have two. He explained that was why he had to take such great care to fully clean them out, and make sure no part of the nerve was left behind, which could get infected. You see, when you have a root canal, it means they are literally killing the tooth. By doing this, it will no longer hurt, but can stay in your mouth to somewhat perform the function of a tooth, with the help of a crown. They say it is better than getting an implant, which is literally drilling a screw into your jaw. After all the workout that had been done that time around, I would hate to disagree getting the implant done sounded awful, and was glad I had decided to just go that far with my faulty chomper.

After the root canal was finished, they began to fit me for a temporary crown, while we had to wait for the permanent to be made, from the mold. This part of my appointment was to be taken care of by the apprentice. And it was her first time. This new development had not been explained in the animated video, and I prayed she had at least seen a more detailed version. I asked to see the nerves that had come out of my teeth, thinking it would be neat, but she told me there wasn’t anything to see, because it comes out in chunks. She showed me what she meant. It just looked like hardened tooth paste, or like little fragments of rubber that you can get, when you pick at a caulk seal. I was disappointed, feeling a bit jipped, thinking it would be like a hair, or vein, like the animated video had shown me. She smiled at me, as if I looked like a kid playing with a worm in curiosity, or in disgust. Her movements began around my face, more unsure than sure. She had to trim off jagged areas of the crown to make it fit more than once, so I would be able to floss. Actually, by more than once, we took seven x rays, and put on and pulled off the small ivory colored cap, over a dozen times. Eventually, the veteran dentist stepped in, and removed the problem object seen in the x ray, that could have been a bone fragment, hardened glue, or plaster from the mold.

I was finally released, luckily, because the numbing agent had been quickly wearing off. I paid my bill, got a date to come back to have the permanent crown installed, and received a prescription for the injury done to the rest of my poor mouth and jaw. I collected my things, and unchained my bike, then realizing it had been three hours. As I walked my bike home, feeling what little of the fat-lip shot they had given me wear off, I began to wish I had driven. If I had, I could go directly to the pharmacy to get the oh-my-God-it-hurts-make-it-stop pills.

I stopped at the local gas station, to pump a bit of air in my soft tire. I started to unscrew the cap and notice a silver band laying on the cement nearby. I picked it up, noting it to be a silver ring with symbol of a fish on the top. It looked like the Jesus symbol, but I absently tried it on, just cause. It fit my finger perfectly. I looked around to see if it looked like anyone may have dropped it and could have rolled over to where I was, but no one was using the gas pump near me. I shrugged, temporarily forgetting about the pain, and walked to the clerk inside. I asked him if anyone had come looking for a ring. When he said no, I told him where to find me if they did. I left the store and slipped the band on again. I may not wear jewelry that often, but I looked at it as if it had been one of the non-candy prizes you use to get when going for your yearly dental check up from the big “treasure chest” every dentist’s office seems to have.  I’m not very religious either, I thought to myself, but if anyone asks, I will just say I picked it because, I’m a Pisces and happily show off my consolation prize from my trip to the dentist.


Other Assignments