What did I do to offend the gods? And which gods did I offend?

My dear, housebound husband looks forward to an outing every day.  I have become very adept at transforming everyday errands into mini-adventures.   But some days the most exciting excursion I can conjure up is a 3-minute drive to Shoppers to pick up a jar of something we just might, one day, feel the need of.  So today’s excursion  seemed perfect:  a trip to the dentist to pick up his newly repaired upper plate.

For over 40 years he has worn the same partial plate but last year the hooks had become loose so we had undergone the ordeal of ordering, sizing and fitting a new set of front teeth for him.  Since then he has managed to break off, lose and/or swallow FOUR of the 9 teeth on the plate!  Needless to say, we are well-known at the dentist’s and have the drill down pat: I take the plate in one day and pick it up, freshly repaired the next morning.  I find it easier to perform this alone as parking in the Yonge and St. Clair area is difficult even with a handicapped sign.  But today, Harry INSISTED on accompanying me.  We got him safely to the car and set off to a recurring theme of “Where are my TEETH???”

As usual, I had made a plan that would involve leaving him alone in the car for a minimum of time; if I’m gone too long he tries to come and find me and in this weather even covered in a blanket he finds the cold intolerable.  The parking lot was full forcing us to revise our route and make an almost impossible left-hand turn onto a dug-up St. Clair lined with cranky drivers who were tired of construction and snow banks.  We managed to work our way to another parking garage and I assured Harry I’d leave the heat on and be back in a jiff. 

All went well; the dentist’s assistants handed over the little blue plastic box and I was back at the car in less than 10 minutes.  At the garage exit, the machine swallowed both my ticket AND credit card and then flashed angrily at me.  There were no buttons of any kind to push (Cancel?  Restart transaction? Call the fire brigade?) so there we sat until a human appeared to interrogate me on what I had done wrong (Uh??? Nothing??) and why we hadn’t left when the gate was up (It WASN’T up!  I wanted my credit card back!).  At that point the trickster apparatus spat my card and receipt into the waiting hand of the garage attendant who assured me cheerily this was WHY he still had a job.  (I’m so happy for him!)

So off we drove, Harry clutching the little blue plastic box and reiterating the theme of missing teeth.  So I told him to open the box.  This he did and swiftly popped the contents into his mouth.  When I asked how they felt he moaned ‘Not good’ then squeezed open his lips to reveal a gaping hole where the missing tooth was still missing!

I performed some kind of illegal traffic manoeuvre and we headed back to the dentist’s.  I did not feel up to sparring with the parking lot and smug attendant again so decided to use Harry’s handicapped sign to park on a side street.  The icy mounds of snow were 3 feet high and the pavement was dangerously narrow and snow-covered.  I ‘parked’ as best I could, wrenched the blue plastic box from Harry’s surprised hands, assured him I would be back in a jiff and scurried back to the dental office.  The entire staff stared in wide-eyed and red-faced disbelief at the dental plate with the gaping hole and assured me they would look after it – again!

As I arrived puffing and sliding back at the car Harry explained to me that I had parked in a very unsafe spot and then asked where his teeth were.  My explanation sounded as ridiculous to me as it did to him but we didn’t have much time to contemplate this as huge, 6-inch thick tiles of frozen snow cascaded noisily off the roof of my car and smothered the entire windscreen.  I couldn’t see ANYTHING so blindly inched to the side of the road much to the dismay of the line-up of cars behind me.  When I judged that it was almost safe to do so I got out and cleared away my own personal avalanche.

The thought of an impending snowstorm tonight and tomorrow morning, a repeat trip to the dentist’s and another 20+ hours of answering the question:  ‘Where are my teeth?’ have me wondering which of the many gods I have annoyed and if, perhaps, they will still be angry tomorrow, and if so, what new forms of torture will they have for me?