Pain and Novocaine

Our scars are songs written on our skin, singing their mournful or joyous melodies through their lingering marks. Among the many dings on my epidermis, my left knee is the first refrain I can remember, holding lyrics bone deep from that time when I Evil-Kneiveled my brand-new ten-speed bike down the hill of our cul-de-sac. I got going too fast to check for on-coming traffic, over-corrected and hit the asphalt, hard. There I lay in the middle of Old Farm Road on my twelfth birthday, grateful to see my father heading toward me, a giant shadow silhouetted against the cloudless May sky.

Yelling. My father was yelling. Maybe to alert oncoming traffic? But no, there wasn’t a car in sight. He was yelling at me.

“I go and get you a nice new bike and this is what you do with it?” he screamed as he picked up my shiny blue bicycle with the now crooked seat and scuffed handle bars. Dad stormed off, carrying the bike and left me crying and bloody in the street.

When I limped into the kitchen, my mother tenderly wiped the blood from my shin and picked the gravel bits from my kneecap.

“Your father just doesn’t know how to express love,” she said as she coated the deep wound with mercurochrome and Neosporin and wrapped my leg with gauze.

“Well, he sure knows how to show love for a bike,” I thought.

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching an Afterschool Special, “The Tap Dance Kid,” on the couch as the smell of a Betty Crocker cake baked in the oven. In the movie, big sister Emma stands up against her parents’ stringent rules and launches a “Children’s Rights Crusade.” That girl was on to something and she totally spoke to my sense of justice. But the star of the show was her little brother, Willie, whose Broadways-calibre tap-dancing skills most captured my imagination.

         That summer, I decided that I too wanted to learn to tap dance. I’d taken ballet when I was younger, but hadn’t danced for several years. Mom agreed to sign me up for a class at Suzie Kovack’s Academy. But the first step to tap steps was tap shoes. We pulled up to Relevé Dancewear in Cameron Village, my toes percolating with excitement. I was so eager to find my rhythm, to let my heart beat in my feet and to stomp out my frustrations.

        But when they measured me, it turned out the only shoes they had in stock were a half-size too small. I Cinderella’s step-sistered those shoes and claimed they fit just fine because I knew my mother. If the mission took too much effort, she’d abort. The only other dance shoe store was way across town. Granted, I later learned that if you took the freeway, it only took about 15 minutes to get there, but by using surface streets as mom always did, the 45-minute drive was daunting. It was either these shoes or no tap.

         And so, I was terrible at tap. Every shuffle-ball-change was an exercise in pain. By the time the recital came in the spring, my shoes were surely a whole size too small. I faked a toothy smile as I flapped and brushed, cramped and step-heeled in my neon pink and yellow sassy, fringed costume with equally neon pink blisters bulging on my heels, a joyful experiment turned torturous.

The following spring my pain took a new turn. Previous wounds did not compare. As our dentist, Dr. Brooks picked and prodded at my molars, I should have known. I made it to 13 without a cavity. Today he found two. I blame it on the big bag of Saltwater taffy we got on a beach trip that summer.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” he said to my mother in the waiting room. They discussed whether he should do the dental work now or schedule a follow-up visit.

 “Let’s get it over with,” Mom said as she got out her checkbook, a side-eyed glare directed toward me still in the dental chair across the hall. She, however, refused to sign off on the use of Novocaine. She said it was because she’d had an adverse reaction many years back and didn’t trust the medication. And she said she didn’t want her child drugged. Dr. Brooks said he wouldn’t advise such an approach, but agreed to rub my gums with numbing gel.

  I think mom thought fear of pain was a good deterrent to the cost of future fillings. Whatever the truth was, the sound of the drill is as high-pitched as the pain that is etched into my jaws and my consciousness, searing, intense, radiating and mind-numbing. I grew up knowing that were I ever to get another cavity, I would have to undergo the repair without a painkiller. Mom was right, fear did make me diligent about brushing my teeth.

         And yes, the fear of pain is a great deterrent, but actual pain is even better. It can keep you from conquering hills at breakneck speed, dancing with abandon and from eating salt water taffy. But many scars are more than skin deep and leave you longing to be picked up when you fall and craving relief from the pain.

As shared at Story Salon on Wednesday, September 4, 2024.