Me Too, Me Too!

Our Common Bonds

My daughter had her wisdom teeth taken out this week. The procedure went well, she got to keep her teeth (which led to me learning that my mother used to take her tonsils — in a jar — to parties until my grandma threw them out), and I got a sweet and funny video of my woozy, chipmunk-cheeked girl.

I posted the aforementioned video as a Reel, and since then I have heard a lot of wisdom teeth extraction stories. The ones from my family have been told and retold for years: I woke up in the recovery room sobbing, with the doctor chuckling in the background about how he, “…had to get the hammer and chisel out on that one!” My brother, on the other hand, entertained my mother the whole way home from the doctor, laughing maniacally while looking in the visor mirror, declaring, “I look like an f***ing beaver!” One friend told me that he was so confused upon waking up afterwards, wondering when the heck they were going to start the surgery. A girl imitated a Tyrannosaurus Rex when her mother told her to bite down on the gauze in her mouth. Nearly everyone, it seems, can relate to this particular life moment.

Hearing these stories reminded me of my pregnancies, and the dozens (hundreds?) of birth stories I heard over those months. Positive and negative, smooth and scary, predictable and surprising, I heard them all. The nightmarish ones had me up at night, spinning wild what if scenarios in my head. (Ok, I was probably going to be awake anyway, what with the back pain and the peeing.) The beautiful, fairy tale stories might have been worse, actually. I’m still irritated at my mother telling me through my entire first pregnancy about how short her labors were. She felt pretty bad at hour 17 of my first birth, I’ll tell you what! (Not so bad that she couldn’t snap a photo of me looking like a sumo wrestler on the birthing ball, though!)

Have you ever complained about your job? Most of us have had a wide range of employment experiences which evoke much commiserating. We’ve all had that job we took because we couldn’t find anything else (mine was the collections company), or that had unreal expectations (the only way to justify a break at the restaurant where I served after college was to go smoke in the basement), or had a horrible boss (my manager used to sing It Wasn't Me, by Shaggy to me and ask me if I had ever caught my boyfriend “bangin’ on the bathroom floor.”) These kinds of stories are especially appreciated by teenagers with their first tastes of employment, by the way.

Here’s one: Teacher Quirks. We often talk about the best ones (Hi, Mrs. Strommer, Mrs. Hall, and Mr. Stubbs!) but the not-so-inspirational teacher tales are more fun to share. An elementary teacher told us graphic stories of car crashes — I still think about the VW bug with the top sheared off by the semi trailer; the driver’s head ended up on the back seat. My husband tells a story about his third grade teacher slamming her ruler down on her desk before hauling him out of math class by his ear. I asked him why and he replied that he was probably being a smartass. I was told I was a “danger to those around me” in seventh grade science and moved to the front row. To be fair, I was chasing a boy around the classroom with pliers… but he spit in my hair, so. In Speech/Debate, our teacher had a buzzer he would sound whenever we uttered deadwood during our speeches (deadwood: uh, um, and so, and that, but).

In Minnesota, we all have a story about where we were during the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. Dan, who worked at a hardware store, was delivering snowblowers around the metro area in his truck. I (being much, much younger) was writing a history paper that I had left until the last minute, while attending to the trick-or-treaters who waded through the already-knee-deep snow to our front door. The joke was on me, since school was canceled the next day! One of my friends just remembers that there was snow piled above the roof of her garage. Another friend was working at McDonald’s and remembers that everybody got to leave except people who lived nearby… so she had to stay. My mom thinks it really wasn’t that bad for us in the north, and points out that it was a different blizzard entirely when a coworker of hers skied into work. My dad, on the other hand, remembers them driving to my uncle’s cabin and having to deer hunt on snowshoes that year.

We have other “where were you when…” stories. My generation is too young for the “when JFK was shot” memories, but most of us remember where we were when we heard that the Challenger exploded (I was in the hallway at school, in a line heading for… lunch? Gym?) We remember the morning of September 11, 2001 (Did your mom call you? Mine did.) I will never forget the morning after Trump was elected as POTUS — and my dad lost re-election to his long-held State Senate seat. My classroom door kept opening as a steady stream of what I can only refer to as mourners came in to offer condolences and share fears. These stories aren’t quite as fun to tell, but telling them bond us in a way, as humans. Shared experiences bring us comfort and chase away isolation.

But seriously, stop telling the pregnant women about how your kid didn’t sleep for the first eight months. They don’t need that image.

Thanks for reading.

Love, Susie