My Interesting Day

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I had a most interesting day yesterday 4-23-2009.

On my way to school (I teach the gifted) I decided to give two movie collections to one of my movie enthusiast students (horror/sci-fi B movies and silents). I had these same movies in a bigger collection. He was delighted because he was getting ready to host a B Movie Party at his house in the near future---so he was contemplating how to get access to these movies. It was a coincidence that I gave him these movies at the time he was planning it.

Then, I decided to take care of something that had been on my mind for many years---to visit my childhood dentist from the late 1960s-early 1970s. After 44 years he is still practicing dentistry in the same place---an old 1920 victorian style house surrounded by ancient towering pine trees. This house has haunted (in a good way) my dreams for many years. In the dreams I go back to him as an adult and I wander about the old house. Not until this week did I have a dream about it where I saw his face. In this dream he was an old man. So I finally decided to call his office and ask him if I could visit. I called him in the early afternoon and he answered the phone. I told him who I was (but I don't think he remembered me) and he said, "Hell yes, stop by anytime." So, on the way home from school, I stopped by. I pulled in the driveway behind his relatively new Infiniti car so that my van was under the shade of those pine trees (so that my sons could stay in the van in the shade). I walked up the old sidewalk and was met with a concrete statue of a sitting dog. Wow! It was the same statue that was there over 35 years ago! I opened the old door and stepped "into the past." The place was locked in the 1960s---just like when I last graced its interior so long ago. There was no one in the waiting room, and the place was so quiet. Then, this tall gray-haired man walked into the tiny office overlooking the waiting room, and he looked at me, and I said who I was. HIS FACE---it was the face I saw in my dream that week---he had aged the way my dream had aged him---really weird. He smiled and began to give me a tour of the place---a tour of my past as a child patient of his. It was very strange that he had just had a cancellation and was totally free to be with me. He said that he been a dentist for 44 years (strange---that is my age). He said the place hadn't changed except for some pictures here and there. In the waiting room he had pictures of his father (who had been a dentist), himself, and his son who he said broke the string of dentists in his family (his grandfather was a dentist too I think). His son was a deputy sheriff. The waiting room chairs were the same ones I had set in so long ago. The carpet was old red fabric from long ago. I truly felt like I was supposed to still be myself as a child in this house that had occupied so many of my dreams. He took me past the little hallway leading into the cleaning room. It didn't look so familiar to me. I remembered the chair that set in front of this large window. And then---there it was. Past that room was the large bay window with the same old dental chair that I had set in as a child. This place was the past---this place is the past. His father's 1913 dental license still hangs on the wall it has always hung on. The only thing out of the present time were pictures of his son and grandchildren. As I was getting ready to leave he said, "I don't golf, I don't play tennis, all I do is practice dentistry---I can never imagine quitting---it is my life." He has a great sense of humor, and he acts like a twenty year old in that place. Though 69 years old, he still has a youthful quality about him. I am 44 years old, but I was somewhere between 3 and 9 years old there yesterday. I visited the past as the boy you see in my avatar. I wonder if that old house with the grey-haired dentist will still haunt my dreams?

After I got home, I had to take my youngest son to his piano lesson. On the way, we got passed by a maniac motorcyle rider going about 100 mph who narrowly missed colliding with an oncoming car in a blind curve. After the lesson, we met my wife at a restaurant in a nearby town. Then, since we had to drive separately yesterday, I got a head start in leaving the restaurant where I had left the last 3 dollars from a love-offering from my music ministry as a tip on the table. At a red light, a woman approached my car. I rolled down my window and saw that she had a younger slightly deformed woman in a wheelchair on the sidewalk with her. The woman asked me, "Sir, could you loan us a couple dollars so that we can eat...I am pregant...and..." I took out my billfold and there was no money in it because I had left the last 3 bucks on the table. I said, "I am sorry, I don't have any money with me." She said thanks anyway. As I moved through the now green light, I saw her in my rear view mirror pushing that other woman (her daughter?) in the wheelchair. I felt awful. How ironic that I had had this love offering of 200 dollars that I had dwindled away at restaurants, the laundry mat, etc. over the past month---then, just minutes after laying down the final money, a beggar came along in need. I am not normally an emotional person...but I almost cried. I got home, and told my wife what had happened. She said she had seen the two women and that had she known, she would have given them something. Well, I went around the house and found a "Where's George" stamped 5 dollar bill, and about 5 dollars in quarters. I got back in my van and headed the fifteen minute trip back to that town. I didn't think I would find them again---it had been over a half hour. It was as if God told me to enter the town from the side road. I did not see them. Then I was led to turn right on the main route---and there they were! I thanked God. I pulled up beside them as they had just turned and were walking on an unbusy side street. I pulled up next to them. The lady turned, and approached me since I had stopped and had opened my window. I said, "I'm sorry I didn't have any money when you approached me before, but I went home and found some money on the table." I handed it to her and she took it in her worn hands. The lady in the wheelchair looked at me with a smile. The lady said, "Thank you sir, God bless you..." I said, "God bless you, and I will pray for you." She walked back to the lady in the wheelchair who I heard say something like "thank you." I drove on, turned onto a back alley. In my rear view mirror I saw them in my mirror. The lady in the wheelchair was looking at me---with a smile. I became overcome in emotion and began crying. I thanked God. It had become apparent to me why He had allowed me to spend those last 3 love offering dollars. Had I had them, those ladies would have gotten 3 dollars from me. But...I went home and came back with 10 dollars. God works in mysterious ways indeed.

On rare occasion, I get emotional. But empathy is not something I am known for. You know, this empathy thing relates to the way we (that are autistic) are able to convey our emotions to others. It isn't that we don't have emotion, it's just that it is hard to show them. And to those women I gave money to---I appeard poker-faced to them. But inside---I was full of emotion. But I probably could not have cried in front of them. That is my empathy issue.

So...that was my day on 4-23-2009------the 41st anniversary of an F5 tornado that hit southern Ohio. But this 4-23 was a beautiful calm day filled with the love of God, some bad movies, two needy women, and a grey-haired dentist in an old house that had haunted my dreams.

wow, that was really interesting to read.
I don't have any specific comments, but
I'm glad you had an interesting day!