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TOOTH SENSE

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................ixIntroduction In Pursuit of Tooth Sense....................................1Chapter 1: More Than Finding the Wallet...................................9Chapter 2: A Saturday Night Family Dinner.................................15Chapter 3: My Father, the Steward.........................................23Chapter 4: Finding My Way in Dentistry....................................31Chapter 5: The Human Factor...............................................39Chapter 6: Considering the Science........................................49Chapter 7: Following a Hunch..............................................57Chapter 8: A New Big Picture of Human Social Behavior.....................69Chapter 9: But Dentistry Is Different.....................................75Chapter 10: Coming to My Senses...........................................81Chapter 11: Tooth Sense—Reaching beyond Science......................87Chapter 12: An Unfinished Quest...........................................93Resources.................................................................103

Chapter One

Long before I knew anything about the profession, the path to my career in dentistry was being set. The circumstances of my family, my neighborhood, the state of our country in the 1970s, and my own personal brand of curiosity, reflection, genetics, and the imprint of experience were setting my psychological and emotional table.

I've found myself later in life revisiting some specific memories and creating a small journal of vignettes that capture some "Kodak moments." I'm including several of these vignettes in this chapter and the two that follow, in order to shed light on who I am, how I chose dentistry as my profession, how I came to pursue my own path, and how I came to write this book.

In June 1971, my family took a vacation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. One morning, not long after my parents, my younger sister, and I had driven away from the small motel where we had stayed the previous night, a crisis arose. My father couldn't find his wallet. The last time he had seen it was while packing the car.

A lost wallet is always a concern. For my father, it was cause for high anxiety. He pulled the car over to the side of the highway, and while fumbling feverishly through the glove box, his pockets, and everything within arm's reach, he boomed orders for everyone to be quiet. This order was unnecessary. The rest of us were already frozen as statues.

My mother and sister, sighing in unison, seemed to say without saying anything, "Oh boy. What now?"

The air seemed to have gone out of their bodies as if they were balloons. The smiles that had radiated from their faces deflated in anxious frowns, and what had been my sister's bouncing up and down gave way to almost mirroring my father's body language. Her whole body stiffened against the backrest.

Meanwhile, my father stared straight ahead, his hands squeezing the steering wheel, his body stiff. Noticing a part of his face in the rearview mirror, I caught a blank fixed stare. It was a familiar scenario. I was not new to seeing him this way. It was how my father reacted when he was not in control or when people around him were not doing what they were supposed to do—even though he had not indicated what they were supposed to be doing. Dad was angry, and the rest of us were in hiding.

But I was about to break the script for this scene. I was about to take my cue from a newfound place.

The previous day, I had caught my first fish. It was just a trout, but I was nine years old; to me, it could have been a marlin. This crisis had interrupted a pleasant mental trout reverie—the nibble on the line, the tug on the line, the give-and-take with the energy on the other end, my gradual taking charge of this transaction, the shiny fish appearing below the surface and then splashing into daylight as I lifted it dangling to a grassy spot on the shore. It wasn't a keeper. So, with my father's assistance, I had unhooked it, held it firmly, and placed it back in the water. It all had taken only a short time, but it had seemed to unfold in slow motion. The experience defied any normal sense of time. Success! How much to be cherished!

Now I found myself in a state of high alert. While my mother and sister did and said nothing, I was taking it all in. During the next few moments, I prepared to do something I had never done before. It was as if the mold that held me was suddenly broken.

This instantaneous change created a rush that made my skin tingle. I was suddenly aware of everything just as much in slow motion as I had experienced landing my first fish the previous day. My mind blanked on everything except the half face I could see in the rearview mirror and shouts continuing from the driver's seat as my father continued fumbling. His showpiece Cadillac Sedan de Ville—its leather interior, dazzling dashboard, and impressive length notwithstanding—was of no comfort.

Over and above the words, I found myself saying, almost brightly, "Hey, Dad, let's go back and see if we can find it." My suggestion seemed so obvious. Yet I could see that no one else in the car had any presence of mind; it was up to me to save the day. My mother and sister were surely useless, and my father was just inconsolably confused. I was the ready one.

I was so confident in the moment that I was actually not surprised when my father took my idea and responded by immediately turning the car around and heading back to retrace our tracks. Though the road, US Route 3, was a major highway, and it was midday, I recall eeriness. The road may have been crowded, but it felt empty to me. Without any conscious thought, I leaned forward so that my arms straddled the space between the two front seats. I wanted a full view of the road ahead. I am not sure what I thought I would see. But I was in charge, even though I had in fact no conscious surveillance strategy. I was just acting on automatic pilot with total focus in response to a crisis.

I don't remember the exact distance we had traveled when he had discovered the loss. It must have been a long way from the motel. At any rate, we drove for quite a while. No one saw anything. There was talk that even if the wallet were by some remote chance on the side of the road, it would be too small to detect. I had a one-point plan: keep my eyes peeled. We were nearly all the way back to the motel, when out of the corner of my eye, just as we were passing it by, I saw something. It was almost as if I had felt it without actually seeing it. It happened in the blink of an eye.

I yelled, "Stop the car."

My father backed to where I had seen—or thought I had seen—something. Yes, there was a small rectangular object. He and I got out and as we reached it. Sure enough, his wallet was right there on the road.

Later we surmised that he had put it on the car roof, and in all of the hurried activity to get to our next destination before dark, he had forgotten about it. But in that moment, my father and I had a moment to be savored together. To say that I was proud would be an understatement. And I had never seen my father so happy. He gave me a hug, and his smile was the widest I had seen. Meanwhile, my mother and sister had remained in the rear...