I am the Elephant Woman

Ok, so the dentist today was awful. Not so much because it physically hurt, it was just such an ordeal and lasted forever. But it gets better...

Finally it's over and they stuff cotton gauze all up in my mouth, and I still can't feel the left side of my body or have the necessary motor skills to control my face. I see a father and his two young kids in the little area next to me getting their check up. I may or may not have made eye contact with the dad, I don't know, but I pay and go down the hall to the bathroom.

So I wait for the elevator and just before the door closes I hear people, so I hit the door-stay-open button. It's the dad who I can see now is Hawaiian looking and his little boy about 7 and a 6 year old looking girl. The boy was teasing his sister about not brushing or having a cavity or something, and I thought to myself, the poor little girl... she looked embarrassed and scared and upset... So I turned a quarter way and she sees me, the only other girl in the elevator, and her eyes were all "Help me here, lady!"

I shrugged my shoulders in that "what can ya do?" way and smiled...

And that's where it all went wrong...

Because I couldn't feel it or see it, I was surprised when the little girl quickly grabbed her dad's hand and started crying, her little Asian eyes now fully circular in horror.

Her dad who'd been talking with the boy looked at me and turned green before my eyes. "Uh... you're sort of..."

I look down. There is a solid and steady line of bloody drool from my bottom lip to the carpet on elevator floor. Red as a fire engine, pretty much like a bloody string from my grotesquely smiling mouth to the floor (I reenacted the smile before the mirror later... yowsers...).

"Off, gawd...Imf soo sowwee..." *DING* doors open, I run for it... all the way to my car.

In the car I was caught between the embarrassment of what happened and the very, very macabre humor of it, too. Part of me wanted to take that to the grave, but another part of me knew it was just another unique moment God gave me to cherish and laugh at when I'm able to.

I told Mike and I was crying and laughing at the same time. He hugged me and tried not to laugh and said, "Ah, honey... How very 'Fight Club' of you..." It was the perfect thing to say.