When I take my kids to see the dentist I expect they’ll come home happy with a fresh new toothbrush, and armed with a renewed commitment to floss their teeth.
The last thing I expect is that they’ll come home with grand gift ideas for themselves.
“Can I have a flat screen TV in my ceiling for my birthday?” my seven-year-old daughter asked after her last appointment
“Like at Dr. Powell’s?”
“Yeah!” my 10-year-old son agreed.
“We could watch TV in bed that way!”
After telling them that watching TV from the ceiling would only be happening at their dentist appointments, I informed them of just how lucky they were since some dentists didn’t even have TVs.
“What?!” they exclaimed, appalled.
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“It’s a luxury, not a necessity,” I explained.
“What does THAT mean?” Daisy asked.
“It means that it’s an extra, like a treat… not something we need,” I said.
“When I was a little girl there was no such thing as TVs at the dentist.”
When I heard myself say that I was reminded of my own mother telling my little brother and I that there was no such thing as anesthetic when she was a child.
I find myself saying the “no such thing” statement more and more these days, which can only mean one thing: I’m getting old.
It’s not just that statement that clued me in.
I surprised myself the first time I asked the kids if they were raised in a barn.
And I could have sworn I heard my mom again when I asked them one day if they thought money grew on trees.
They just looked at me quizzically, much like the way I probably looked at my own parents as a child.
I hear my husband aging himself too.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” he told me the other day.
Huh? Is he calling himself a tree?
And me a dog? I don’t get it.
He’s also looking older, with his little reading glasses on the tip of his nose.
He went from having perfect vision one day to becoming completely far sighted over night.
He now can’t see anything close up without his readers and is constantly needing me or the children to assist him because he can’t find one of his many pairs of glasses that are lying all around the house.
Aggravated at not being able to see when trying to read something on the fridge calendar, he huffed with irritation when he couldn’t find his glasses last night.
“They’re on your head Daddy,” our daughter laughed.
“Couldn’t you feel them? It’s not like you have hair up there.”
Smiling, he brought them down to his face and looked at my scribbles on the calendar.
“You guys have a dentist appointment coming up,” he said to the kids.
“Have you been flossing?”
“If we have, can I have a flat screen TV in my ceiling?” asked
Daisy.
Obviously she does think that money grows on trees.
Clearly she’s barking up the wrong tree.
Lori Welbourne is a Black Press columnist, www.onabrighternote.ca.