to thine own self be true
I’m looking at a seventeen year chip I got last year from my dentist, a dear friend whom I call Painless. When I had a mouth full of rotting teeth, he made an appointment with me. I told him I wasn’t able to pay for anything. Painless smiled, lit a cigarette and then told me he’d see me on Thursday, his day off.
He spent over three weeks pulling rotten teeth, filling cavities, replacing ill-fitting caps. Then he built bridges to fill in the holes in my face where teeth had once been. I don’t have pain in my mouth anymore and I never, ever saw a bill. And that’s how Painless spends his days off.
The seventeen year chip is a brag tag signifying that it’s been 17 years since my last drinky-poo. At twenty years of age I was in danger of losing my liver from drinking. My last drink was in 1988 and many years before I quit selling my plasma and doing drugs. Now I don’t even drink coffee.
I started writing this because I was feeling my right front tooth with my tounge. My Dad busted me in the lip using his fist when I was a kid and he chipped that tooth. It’s a small thing, but I get to remember him by it.
Chip
Tooth
Then I thought of Painless and I dug the chip out of my pocket to look at. On the chip it says To Thine Own Self Be True. Then everything else came out the way you read it.
Love is all that matters in the end.
