Valentine's Day/Spit Take

Happy Valentine's day. Do yourself a favor and go read Jenny Traig's Obsessive-Compulsive Valentines. They will make you laugh hard.

Speaking of laughing, I almost had my first actual spit take today. One of my Creative Writing students, apropos of a conversation about legal drugs (i.e. sedatives administered for surgery), mentioned that his mom had a root canal yesterday and her oral surgeon was named Dr. Grody. I had a mouthful of water and had to struggle mightily to swallow rather than spitting it across the faces of several stunned students or breathing it in and having it squirt out my nose. Dr. Grody. The name touched a very powerful junior high humor nerve in me. My student added that just as the drugs Dr. Grody had administered were kicking in, his mom noticed that his oral hygienist had, in his words, “a hook for a hand.” The image of an oral hygienist with a prosthetic hook and a patient on nitrous oxide did not help me any in my efforts to take my water like an adult. But by an act of will, I swallowed before I busted out laughing.

Then I felt very badly for his mom. God, I hope I never need a root canal.