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Dental Trauma

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At five months, human babies love the world and trust everybody in it. When I took her in for a routine pediatric checkup, my daughter Rossella smiled and gurgled and laughed, assuming that everyone in the world loved her, and nothing and no one would hurt her.

The checkup required that a little blood be drawn, from a finger prick. As I held Ross in my lap, she smiled cheerily at the nurse approaching with a trayful of blood-drawing equipment. “I feel so guilty,” sighed the nurse. “They’re always so trusting at this age.” Ross looked on interestedly as the nurse unwrapped a lancet, grasped her tiny forefinger, then rapidly poked it with that sharp piece of metal.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Ross’ face turned red and her eyes bulged with shock while the nurse hurriedly squeezed a drop of blood into a tube. Then Ross began to scream. These weren’t wails of pain or sorrow: she was giving voice to sheer outrage. She simply couldn’t believe that the world she had greeted with open arms had turned on her so suddenly and shockingly. Trust was shattered, and she had no intention of forgiving anybody anytime soon.

I cuddled her in my arms, telling her uselessly that the nurse hadn’t wanted to hurt her, that it was all for her own good, that everything was fine – and I reflected on the betrayed trust of children.

When I was age eight or so, I had an abcessed tooth. My mother took me to the dentist, who sat me in the big chair, examined me, and then went off in the corner to consult with my mother. Though they kept their voices low, I hear the word “extraction,” and asked worriedly, “You’re not going to do that now, are you?”

“No, of course not,” said the dentist soothingly, approaching me in the chair again. “Now just lie back and let me take a look.” The next thing I knew was searing pain as she wrenched that tooth out, followed by gouts of blood all over my favorite blouse. (I didn’t own much girly clothing, and was very fond of that frilly white blouse and the little red skirt that went with it – both ruined with bloodstains that day.)

My next memory is of being back at our house, standing in the garden, my jaw aching and my mouth full of blood-soaked wads of cotton. I was still in shock. I couldn’t believe that two grown-up women had done that to me, had deliberately lied and then hurt me when they said they weren’t going to.

My next dental experience was in Pittsburgh, where my dad (by then single-parenting me) couldn’t understand why I was so afraid that I would scream and tremble and cry as soon as the dentist got near me. I became so hysterical that he slapped me (the only time I can ever remember my dad hitting me), which naturally didn’t help. Anesthesia seemed the only solution, and that was what we did for years, every time, for every little cavity. I hated the sensation of going under (and the dentist’s repeated lie that the gas would smell sweet), hated waking up nauseous in a cold waiting room, to the sound of a local radio station. Once I awoke to an ad for “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein” – not exactly soothing. But all of this was better than facing the dentist.

Although I gave up the anesthesia years ago, I still tense up in doctors’ and dentists’ offices – places of concentrated pain, as far as I’m concerned.

Tomorrow I will accompany Ross to have her first wisdom tooth out. She’s not a bit afraid. Though she had to start seeing dentists early in life, I was very, very careful to ensure that nothing was ever done to her without her knowledge and consent, and we were fortunate to find a dentist with staff whose patience and kindness were at least equal to my own. This meant a lot of visits in which nothing at all was accomplished on the dental front, but Ross grew to trust everybody so much that she eventually let them do everything they needed to, even the painful things, without fuss or fear. For a while she even aspired to be a dentist herself!

So she’s not worried about tomorrow. Nor should I be: our dentist here in Lecco is a family friend and absolutely competent. But, still, I can’t help my stomach clenching a little. Some childhood experiences you just never quite get over.

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Italian culture, living in Italy

Riding the Bus in Italy

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I wrote last year about the irritations of riding the bus with the schoolkids in the morning. They haven’t learned any more manners this year. As always, they gather where they think the bus doors will be when it stops, then elbow each other to get in first. When I see the bus coming I move in that direction, but consider it beneath my dignity to blatantly step in front of them all – someone’s got to set an example of civilized manners. Once the door is open, I let those ahead of me in “line” board, politely but firmly block anyone else from cutting in front of me (provoking some mutters, which I pretend to ignore), and, when finally on the bus, I give the driver an eye-roll about the kids’ lack of manners.

Evidently he agrees with me. The other morning, the bus pulled up very carefully and stopped a meter short of its usual position – right in front of me. I assumed that this was just coincidence, but as I stepped onto the bus, rightfully before everybody, the driver gave me a complicit grin. I smiled sweetly back. We’d pulled one over on the kids for once.

International Manners

Jan 17, 2006

In response to the above, Rick Freeman wrote:

“We were in Bermuda some while ago, and perhaps the most memorable thing about the trip is the way people acted on the bus … it was beyond manners, more of a whole etiquette dance. Every time there was a stop, the people who sat checked to see who came in and how they ranked. Virtually everyone got up at some point and gave their seat to someone else (older, pregnant, etc.).

Not exactly the most interesting place I’ve visited, but certainly lots of people with good manners.”

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bio, Uncategorized

Buying a Car in Italy – Are Car Salesmen the Same All Over?

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On Monday Enrico brought home our new car, a Fiat Stilo. It took him a month of intensive research to eventually return to his first, instinctive choice – which is simply the next generation of the Fiat Tipo turbo diesel that served us (more or less faithfully) for 13 years, which was itself a replacement for the Fiat Uno handed down by his parents.

Ross is disappointed: a Fiat isn’t cool enough for her (she hangs out with a wealthy crowd in Lecco – I have recently had to explain to her why SUVs are evil, even for people who can afford them). Enrico and I care little about cars beyond that they should run as reliably and cheaply as possible, while maintaining a basic level of comfort and safety.

I went with him on a few car-testing trips, and realized that we were a very confusing couple for the car salesmen to deal with. Given the types of cars Enrico had been looking at, everyone assumed he was choosing a vehicle for his wife. A year or so ago, before we were actively thinking about replacing the Tipo, Ross asked us: “If you could have any kind of car in the world, what kind would you get?” Enrico’s response was: “A minivan.” At which I laughed out loud and told him he was henceforth banned from the fraternity of real men – a real man, at least in his fantasies, would aspire to a Lamborghini or some such!

So the car dealers asked if I wanted to test drive (I didn’t), and insisted on showing me the wife-friendly features like hooks to hang your shopping bags in the trunk (I do most of my big shopping on the Internet, so a nice man with a truck brings it to my house). For most of the test drives, I insisted on sitting in the front passenger seat – my usual place. Once, when we tried a big (used) Citroen sedan, the salesman got there before me, and throughout the drive kept up a stream of manly talk about the powerful engine etc. Nice car, but his attitude would have nixed that sale even had we seriously been in the market for a car that big and expensive to fuel.

My only test, in all the cars, was to sit in the front passenger seat, slide it all the way back, then get into the seat behind it and see how much legroom was left. If I could sit comfortably without my knees touching the back of the front seat, the car passed. Enrico laughed at this, but I have long legs, and always hated being stuck in the back seat just because I was the kid. Several members of our extended family also have long legs, and when they’re visiting I don’t want them (or me) to suffer.

I was amused and delighted to find that one car dealer was selling cars and trucks made by Tata, an Indian company. Last year in Mumbai I had met an Italian who was trying to re-introduce Fiats to the Indian market – with globalization, what goes around comes around!

So we’ve done our bit for the Italian economy, buying local, and at least two of us are satisfied with our purchase. The next question is just how fancy a navigation and music system to put into it. We definitely want GPS navigation (to save arguments about whether I’m reading the map properly), and would like something that interfaces intelligently with our iPods. Hmm. We have some more studying to do”¦ and I can look forward to playing with the heads of salesmen who will expect me to know far less about electronics than my husband does!

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bio, opinion

Violent America: Why I Don’t Feel Safe in My Own Country

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I return to the US, my putative homeland, at least once a year, and even when not there, I (like most of the world) have constant access to American culture via movies, TV shows, and websites. In spite of all this, I feel ever more a stranger when I land there. I can’t put my finger on why. Have I become more European? (Whatever that means.) I don’t feel European, or Italian, but lately I don’t feel particularly American either.

Perhaps I’ve become unaccustomed to some of America’s standard features, such as the plethora of churches – in many states juxtaposed with huge store signs advertising guns.

Guns, yes, that’s a factor. America feels less safe to me than Europe. One big reason is that there are far more guns around in the US, waiting to be snatched up and fired in a moment of rage. I have often thought, at times when I’m almost mad enough to throw dishes, that if there was a gun to hand, I’d be at risk of using it. So I’m glad there aren’t any in our house, and I prefer to stay away from guns altogether – I don’t trust myself with them, let alone anybody else.

Are Americans inherently more violent, with or without guns? On our way back from North Carolina, Susan and I were very irritated, even worried, by a pickup truck that hugged our bumper in fast, heavy highway traffic. I turned around and made a pushing-back motion with my hands, trying to indicate to the driver that he should give us more room. Susan snatched my hands down, saying: “Don’t do that. You never know, here.” (Susan lives in Abu Dhabi, and says it’s the safest place she’s ever lived.) I do exactly this in Italy, and it never occurred to me that anyone might consider it a shooting offense.

Reflect on the recent confrontation, at a children’s baseball game, between all four grandparents and the father of a boy at the center of an ugly custody dispute, reported thus in the local paper:

“[The maternal grandmother], Patricia Noe… may have sparked the confrontation when she said something to Jerry Shands [the father] and pointed an umbrella at him, the district attorney said.

"Then, of course, he says, ‘Get that blankety-blank thing out of my face.’ … And the next thing you hear is pop, pop, pop (from Samuel Noe’s gun)."

Three people dead, one critically injured, and the boy himself a witness. Which begs the question: Who the hell goes armed to a kids’ baseball game? And in how many parts of America is it legal to do so? I don’t want to live in any place where an angry grandpa can just whip out a gun and start shooting – because, god knows, we wouldn’t want to infringe on his right to bear arms and protect his grandson from a bad umpire call!

Yet Americans seem to take this potential for violence for granted. Reporting on this week’s “incident” in a Colorado school, the New York Times says: “Gov. Bill Owens, who visited the school and the church Thursday afternoon, said he thought school security improvements made in Bailey after the 1999 attack at Columbine High School in nearby Littleton had probably kept Wednesday’s attack from being worse. The school was built with evacuation fully in mind, including a system that allowed students in adjoining classrooms to escape quickly…”

Huh? Schools are now being built with evacuation in mind? I already knew that in some districts people have to go through metal detectors to get into a school in the first place, but – evacuation? And we’re not talking about al Qaeda here – the danger is from ordinary American citizens, including the schoolkids themselves.

What kind of society is America’s that kids have to spend their school days under the assumption that at any moment they could be rounded up and shot? Is that how we want American children to be growing up? How can such an atmosphere produce psychologically healthy citizens? It’s not videogames that inure kids to violence: it’s what they see every day on the news and in their daily lives!

What could have stopped this week’s tragedy would have been to ensure that some random guy who didn’t even have a home address did NOT HAVE A GUN. How could he have legally bought it if there’s no address to do a background check on him? If he got it illegally, why was that allowed to happen?

What makes America even scarier is that the violence is not on the surface. Everyone we meet in America seems so nice, especially anyone in a customer service position (truly startling when you’re accustomed to the indifferent or downright hostile service culture of most European establishments). Yet, given the number of deaths, you have to wonder: how many of these nice people are ready to explode? And will find a weapon ready to hand when they do?

What are your thoughts?

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