Cavities: A Metaphor for Whatever I Feel Like

Do you ever have those nights when you lay down to go to bed and you know you have Something On Your Mind that makes it hard to sleep? The little ball of barbed wire in which all we good Clarkes keep dirty things like emotion, does that sit there in your chest until you do something about it?

Well, it happens to me. And before I can go to sleep on those type of nights, all I have to do is identify what it is that is bothering me. I don't have to address it, per se, just acknowledge its existence so that I can put safely aside for the next day. Usually.

So last night I had this little ball, and I spent a while searching for the little clasp that would spring the trap and let me fall asleep.

Returning the car and the inevitable beatdown that will ensue? No.
Going back to school with everybody graduated? No.
Moving? No.
RA training? No.
Work? No.
Cavity? BING!

Wait a minute. Cavity? Why cavity? There are horror and famine and death and people getting shot on the London subway for running while brown, and cavity? Cavity is nothing.

I think what it is is that I feel horribly betrayed by Cavity. For a very long time, my teeth and I had an agreement: they took the food I gave them and converted it to a form usable by my tummy, and in turn I ignored them and played like they didn't exist. Everyone was happy with this arrangement: teeth, tummy, self. Cavity did not exist. But now that I have decided to stop living dangerously and take care of the teeth with twice daily brushings and Listerinings when I can afford them and religious flossings, they turn on me! Impeccable oral hygiene should guarantee no Cavity! And it's not even like real health, where you can run 5 miles a day for 30 years and eat only organic carrots and still drop dead when you're 45, because real health has Unexplained Factors. Cavities have no unexplained factors: brush your teeth! you will not get them!

So it is the beginning of the end, and my body has begun to turn on me. In retribution (or fear?) I have temporarily cut pop-Coke-soda-carbonated-beverages from my diet, although it's not like I drink the stuff with real sugar in it so it shouldn't matter. Anyway, I am DETERMINED to not only kick the crap out of Cavity, but to keep his friends from moving in by putting plastic all over the furniture and keeping the fridge empty. Mr. Selfish can go out and get a job and pay some damn rent, is what he can do. Diseased, freeloading jerk.