Tuesday, April 23, 2013

            I like precision.   I love to see the way things are constructed and how they work.  Things that have rules and reasons and properties make sense to me.  Building things has always appealed to me, and for that reason I enjoy carpentry and cabinetmaking and architecture.  Welding appeals to me because it has principles that, if followed, result in incredibly strong structures.  Earthmoving might seem to be a loosey-goosey process, but laying out a road that is flat and on grade or digging a hole of particular dimensions requires planning and skill.  Concrete work might seem to have nebulous properties because the material is soft and gooey, but building accurate forms and pouring the “marvelous mud” into them results in a crisp object or structure with flat sides and exacting corners.  When I was a boy, we had a neighbor who was a watchmaker.  I would watch with fascination as he disassembled and cleaned and reassembled the myriad microscopic parts.  Looking through a loupe fastened to his glasses and over a drawer that pulled out from his workbench to touch his chest and catch any tiny dropped parts, Orrin could remove and replace hairsprings and bearings and crystals and crowns, clean all the components in his special cleaning machine, and reassemble them to work again.  Even in dentistry, I enjoy the exacting processes of cavity and crown preparation, surgery and even orthodontics.  What I never enjoyed was dentures.  Denture construction is a loosey-goosey process that doesn’t have enough precision, primarily because mouths with no teeth don’t have much precision.  There is little similarity between the precision a person with teeth can perceive and that which an edentulous person can perceive.   That is because the proprioceptive organ of the periodontal ligament which surrounds the root of the tooth is missing in a mouth without teeth.  I’ve always hated painting because it is messy and sloppy and often imprecise.  I must have been one of those children who insisted on coloring inside the lines and enjoyed using pencils instead of-heaven forbid-water paints where the colors ran all over the lines.  My wife has asked me uncountable times to trim her hair, and I have sometimes obliged her, but dislike doing it because cutting hair is an imprecise art.  I admire those that can do it well, as I admire painters and removable prosthodontists, but they are not me.  When I was in the Army, I was stationed at Camp Zama, Japan.  The other dentist in the clinic was an avid golfer and he persuaded me to join the golf club.  I bought some clubs and we would shoot 6 holes before work on the deserted but beautiful course.  One afternoon, I was golfing with one of my patients, a sergeant.  He watched me swing with less than desirable results, and after a while, he said, “Sir, You gotta get loose!”  I said, “I understand what you mean, sergeant, but I am not loose.  I try, but I am not loose.”  I realized then that I wasn’t a golfer and trying to be one was frustration and denying the talents I have while trying to adopt one that was clearly not mine.  I sold my clubs.  I think this explains well my preference for certain activities and my distaste for others.  It’s just the way I’m built.  Blame my genes.