Chapter Ten: Telling Stories (You Told Them Mannequins Did What?)​​​

 

 

     I came upon the storytelling gene naturally enough. A fireman with the Cleveland Fire Department, my father had a tale for everything from the real ingredients in my morning oatmeal to how my mother’s garden gnome spent his off-hours.

 

For some unknown reason, the majority of Dad’s stories revolved around the dentist's office. Resenting my mother’s rule regarding regular six-month check-ups, Dad insisted on writing long post-appointment texts detailing the horrors that lay beyond those dark walls. All were intentionally melodramatic, most borrowing from whatever terror classic struck his gruesomely comic sense of humor that day.

 

I’m not sure about my mother, but my sister and I looked forward to these stories like kids of old waiting for the next dime novel. Dad’s Frankenstein dentist was my personal favorite. To the best of my memory, it went something like this.

 

Darling,          

 

I am alive, though maybe just barely. Late in my appointment, the man I knew only as “the dentist” suggested an implant. Despite considerable misgivings, I reluctantly agreed.

 

Before I could change my mind, the dentist summoned his assistant, a short, powerfully built man with a rather prominent hump. I believe his name was Eeyore, or perhaps it was Endor - anyway, it was something like that.

 

With a nod from the dentist, Eeyore pulled a lever, and the section of floor around the exam chair began to rise. Upward we rose, Eeyore, the dentist, and I, until a hole opened, and we reached the roof of the building itself. Once outside, a violent storm arose as if out of nowhere. Soon I heard the boom of thunder, the sounds seemingly timed with the dentist’s maniacal laughter.

 

Eventually, the dentist removed an object I realized was my implant and placed it on a large metal pole. Minutes later, a stray bolt of lightning struck the object, and the dentist screamed in triumph. Removing the implant, he then advanced upon me. Frightened, I tried to escape, but my head was stuck firmly within Eeyore’s strong grip.

 

Once the dentist began, the implantation took only minutes. When the procedure was finished, Eeyore again pulled the lever, and we began our descent back to the office where my nightmare first began.

 

In the office, I briefly felt I had regained the upper hand. Sensing my dissatisfaction, the dentist offered me half-price on the cost of the implant. No fool, I bargained him down to twenty-five percent, a concession I now realize my tormentor accepted far too readily.

 

For it is only now that I am truly aware of the insanity I agreed to. You may think me mad, my love, but my tooth is now talking to me!  It is telling me to do things, commit terrible acts no human should ever contemplate. Even worse, the tooth knows things about me – details no implant should ever know!

 

I am heading home now, and I hope you will be there to greet me. For my new tooth and I are hungry now … so very, very hungry.

 

See you soon!

 

What kid wouldn’t appreciate a tale that warped?  Still, I never repeated Dad’s dentist stories to my children. I wanted Jack and Emily to maintain at least a few healthy teeth, not to mention their sanity.

 

That hesitation aside, I began telling my own stories when Jack reached two. I started with the easy stuff – usually talking giant dinosaurs with funny T-Rex voices. More often than not, the stories ended with the dinosaurs chewing the head off my mother-in-law.

 

I considered those stories cathartic, Alma somewhat less so. She did allow me to continue, however, making the kids promise under penalty of early death to never, ever repeat a word of Daddy’s stories to their grandma.

 

After Jack’s third birthday, I moved my stories outdoors for the more hardcore stuff. Like my mother, Alma also had a gnome in her garden. In my tale, the little guy became “Genome,” the world’s only gnome mad scientist. After Genome, we moved to other things – what was really buried underneath the bale of hay at the kid’s favorite petting zoo; Homer’s previous job as a spy for the CIA; and the secret society of store mannequins who fought crime at night after the customers left and the lights turned off.

 

“You are going to warp their little minds,” Alma warned me one night.

​

“Nonsense - my father told me the same kind of stories, and I turned out okay.” 

 

“The fact you’re telling them disproves that theory.” 

 

“Just remember, you married me.”

 

“That’s when I thought you were delightfully eccentric. Now I just think you’re nuts.”

 

“I wouldn’t be so quick to judge. The dinosaurs can turn on you as well.”

 

Alma’s reservations aside, I made up more stories and even borrowed a few of my father’s. There were admittedly times I probably went over the top. The ladybug tale, while brief, was a prime example.

 

In fairness, I was trying to save a life. Fearless in almost all aspects of her life, my daughter Emily made a notable exception for crawling insects. Spiders were the worst - the sight of even one tiny arachnid would elicit a scream audible to neighbors, not to mention some satellite listening devices. It didn’t matter whether the bug was big or small; Emily had no use for insects of any variety.

 

“Remind me,” I said to Alma after the third spider-killing trip to Emily’s room one evening, “never to plan an Australian vacation.” 

 

Emily’s disgust for the “crawlies,” as she called them, wasn’t limited to spiders alone. Ants, caterpillars, and even ladybugs were all fit objects for my daughter’s wrath.

 

Outside one warm spring Saturday, Emily spotted a ladybug maneuvering on our sidewalk. Being the tigress she was, she decided to dispatch the interloper with her shoe. Seeing the unwanted visitor at the same time as Emily, I caught her just before the ladybug could be liquidated.

 

“You don’t want to do that,” I chided my daughter gently, “ladybugs are lucky - farmers love them because they kill little bugs called aphids that chew up the farmers’ crops. The aphids land when the crops are growing on the farms. As soon as they see aphids, farmers call in their ladybug army.” 

 

Both of my children appeared skeptical, but I plowed forward nonetheless.

 

“All farmers have their very own ladybug army – it’s a requirement for owning a farm. When the farmer spots an aphid, he blows his pink ladybug trumpet, and the ladybugs come running from their little ladybug army barracks, no matter the time of day. Once called, they search out and eat the aphids until they are no more.”

 

Skeptical had turned to spellbound. I needed a perfect ending, but my big finish almost led to my own demise. “You may wonder how those tiny ladybugs could eat anything much less a bug not much smaller than they are. Few people know that ladybugs have a second set of sharp teeth hidden inside their tiny little mouths. Once they see an aphid, those little buggers chew them right up.”

 

Jack, practical like his sister, saw a flaw with my scenario.  “What do the ladybugs eat when the apigs aren’t on the farmer’s crops?”

 

Emily smirked, but I had a ready answer. “They’re aphids, Jack, not apigs. When they’re not eating aphids, the farmers feed the ladybugs cheeseburgers - as many as they can eat. Ladybugs like cheeseburgers almost as much as aphids.”

 

Emily then asked the inevitable question. “Daddy, is this really true?”

 

“Ask your grandfather. He’ll back me up.”

 

I was safe. My Mom and Dad lived over forty miles away and weren’t due to visit for another couple of weeks. By the time they came, Emily and Jack would have moved onto some other matter of vital importance, like why Little Bear never wore clothes.

 

It was a good plan in theory, if not execution. My mom and dad, both bearing candy, stopped by two weeks after the ladybug story, and the kids appeared to have forgotten my tale. Emily showed grandma her new building blocks while Jack demonstrated to grandpa that you could, despite numerous company safety assurances, remove the wheels from a Tonka truck.

 

Sitting with my parents at our kitchen table, I couldn’t help asking. “How come I was never allowed to have candy when I was their age?”

 

“There’s a difference,” my father replied, “between children and grandchildren. When Jack and Emily start bouncing off the walls, your mother and I can just go home. Besides, you were crazy enough without a Nestle’s high.”

 

A Nestle’s high?  By this time, I had forgotten all about ladybugs until one of the little critters flew into the room. I looked at Emily, hoping for a distraction, but she had seen the bug before I did. Transfixed, she looked like the female lead in a horror movie right before the inevitable scream. Trying to divert my daughter’s attention, I made the funniest face I could imagine while praying to God that Alma and my parents would never notice.

 

If nothing else, I discovered God has no patience for ladybug stories. Emily screamed; Alma and my mother turned, and I was doomed. For a little girl, Emily could scream like a banshee.

 

Alma beat my mother by maybe half a second. “Emily, what’s wrong!”

 

Pointing, Emily said, “That’s a …ladybug.”

 

Looking in the direction of Emily’s gaze, my mother picked up the ladybug and held it for Emily to see. “Look, honey, they’re harmless. Farmers even think they’re lucky.”

 

Seeing her grandmother holding what she considered an apex predator, Emily screamed again. “Gramma, put that down before it eats you with its big giant teeth!”

 

Emily didn’t have to say where she picked up this slightly exaggerated bit of knowledge – Alma knew immediately. The look she gave me was worse than the time I forgot to take off my shoes after cleaning up Homer’s mess outside. Emily then elaborated, as I knew she would. God truly hated me, after all.

 

“Grandpa – Daddy said you told him about the teeth. Is that true?” 

 

My mother’s glare now matched Alma’s, while my father just looked impressed. The two most important women in my life had murder on their minds. I tried to explain.

 

“I know this sounds bad, but Emily was going to kill one the other day. I figured the best way to stop her was …”  I never got to finish.

 

“You figured the best way was to give her nightmares for the rest of her life?”  Alma had started speaking, and my mother finished her sentence. It was like they had become one person, one terrifying, potentially homicidal person.    

 

I tried again. “It wouldn’t have been the rest of her life. She would have figured it out eventually.”

 

Women never listened to logic. I then went straight to the last page of the husband/son playbook – I apologized.

 

“Emily, I’m sorry I told you about teeth. Grandma is right. Ladybugs aren’t dangerous, and they won’t hurt you. They are considered lucky, and you should never, ever kill one. Save that for the spiders. Those are truly icky.”

 

Alma looked ready to object but then remembered she hated spiders even more than Emily. I thought I was out of the woods, but then my Mom remembered she had heard a story like this before.

 

Throughout the entire controversy, my father had tried to play the innocent. His luck was no better than mine. My mother turned her glare in his direction.

 

“This sounds like one of your father’s stories. Are you also going to try and make your kids afraid of the dentist?”

 

I made the mistake of responding. “I’m not sure. I think Dad may have been onto something there. Didn’t you ever wonder what they really do with those teeth they extract?  And why do you have to keep coming in every six months?  Even regular doctor visits are only once a year.”

 

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Alma’s gaze now held more menace than her earlier ladybug glare. I tried again to make amends.

 

“Don’t worry, guys, Dad’s only kidding about the dentist. Doctor Tom is really a very good person who’s only trying to keep your teeth nice and clean. Any pain he inflicts is purely incidental.”

 

As apologies go, I could have worded things better. My mother muttered, “just like his father,” as my father looked down at the table, his face breaking into a slight smile when he thought my mother wasn’t looking.

 

Alma decided to take matters into her own hands. “Okay, kids, new rule. When Daddy tells you one of his stories, you make sure to ask Mommy before you get upset.”

 

Emily took this as an excuse to review a whole litany of past tales.

 

“So the mannequins in the store …?”

 

“The mannequins do not come to life, no.”

 

Jack, this time - “What about Genome the garden gnome?”

 

“Genome is not a mad scientist, and he doesn’t conduct experiments on the squirrels in the backyard.”

 

Now my father really looked impressed.

 

“Why are squirrels all so crazy, then?”

 

“That’s just the way squirrels are, honey.”

 

“What about the story of how you and Daddy first met?”

 

I jumped in quickly. “Mommy already knows that one, Jack.”

 

“That’s okay,” Alma replied. “I think I’d like to hear it from Jack.”

 

“Daddy said you thought he was cute, so you stuck out your foot and tripped him when he walked by.”

 

Looking at me, Alma said, “That’s funny. I have a very different memory of that day.”

 

“Do you want the kids to think their very existence was contingent on Daddy being a klutz?”

 

Emily again – “What about Homer scaring off the neighborhood land sharks?  Daddy said Homer attacked one who tried to fit inside our mail slot, and that’s why the rest stay away from our house.”

 

Alma looked at me - she hadn’t heard that one. “There are no such things as land sharks, Emily, and Homer couldn’t scare a housefly.”

 

For some suicidal reason, I decided again to chime in. “Of course not; Homer couldn’t reach anything up in the air like that.”

 

Alma glared, but I didn’t want the kids to abandon their sense of whimsy. Jack, God love him, brought the discussion to a close.

 

“What about the tiny pink and black clothes I spotted in your drawer when Dad was putting away the laundry. Daddy said they were bathing suits from a big doll you had when you were growing up. Daddy said they had sendmetal value, especially for him. Mommy – what does sendmetal mean?”

 

I never knew my wife could turn quite that shade of red. Ever the diplomat, my mother picked that moment to gaze at the trees outside our kitchen window. Knowing I was on thin ice, I still couldn’t resist.

 

“My stories don’t sound so bad now, do they?”       

 

The ladybug incident aside, I couldn’t bring myself to stop entirely. As my father once said, the great ones never do. To stay on Alma’s good side, however, I did repurpose them a bit. Doing so meant dialing up one of my Dad’s old favorites – I went back to the dentist.

 

My six-month visit was in April, two weeks after Emily’s big reveal. As I told the kids, Doctor Tom was a decent guy, and my checkup was cavity-free.

 

Nonetheless, I decide to revisit old ground from my childhood and write Alma a long fact-free text. Binge-watching an old show had given me the idea.  

 

God help me, today I met the smoking man.

 

Strapped in the dentist’s chair undergoing the most excruciating pain imaginable, I realized there was someone else in the room with us. Seated across from me, the unidentified man’s head seemed to be obscured by fog. At first, I blamed the anesthesia; then I remembered the dentist saying I wouldn’t require any that day.

 

It came to me then - could the man be smoking?  I knew it was either that, or he had set his chair on fire. As I was currently trapped, I found myself rooting for the former.

 

The smoke slowly seeping into my brain, I began to wonder – was this the man at the center of the dental conspiracy?  Was this the man directing my dentist, and all dentists like him, in the evil plot I had long suspected?

 

As if to confirm my suspicions, the dentist laughed. With a malignant chuckle, he informed me I would never get out of this room alive.

 

“The tooth I have taken from you today will be just the start of my human-alien hybrid line of bicuspids. With yours as a model, hybrid teeth will be planted into millions of unsuspecting patients making the alien takeover merely a formality.”

 

The dentist’s confession complete, I again heard laughter – this time from my observer. I am not proud to confess I took some pleasure as the unidentified man began coughing. One should never start smoking, my love - the habit never leads to anything good.  

 

I struggled to free myself from the dentist’s chair but was held fast by the straps the dentist had attached. He had told me they were necessary for liability purposes. Why did I believe him?

 

Desperate, I resumed struggling and this time somehow broke free. Now released from the chair, I ran past the dentist, the cigarette-smoking man, and the diving lunge of the dentist’s new assistant, a tall, gangly woman with an unusually shaped head.

 

Based on her green pallor, I assumed the assistant was ill, though her two extra arms will forever remain a mystery. Thinking of her as I ran, I couldn’t help wondering - where did the dentist get these people?

 

I continued my escape, exiting the building through the back stairway. Once outside, I was again stopped, this time by a tall man in a dark trench coat. Grabbing my collar, this new man began to tell me things, information about the dental conspiracy only an insider would know. To my now-crazed mind, the man became “Deep Throat.”  In part, this was based on the information he relayed, though it was also the title printed on his nametag.

 

The man somehow even knew of today’s extraction!  Telling me my tooth was already being shipped across the country, the man said he belonged to a rebel organization dedicated to stopping the alien conspiracy. Encouraging me to continue searching for my missing bicuspid, he finished by uttering a sentence that will haunt me for the rest of my days.

 

“The tooth,” the man declared, “is out there.”

 

I was suddenly furious. “The tooth is out where, you idiot?  That is the most insipid line I’ve ever heard, like something from a nineteen-nineties television show.”  I began shaking him, then, “Where is my tooth?  Where is it?  

 

“We don’t know.” Deep Throat admitted reluctantly, “We think it might be headed to Jersey or perhaps Kansas. To be honest, our tech people aren’t very good.”

 

I walked away, disgusted with my erstwhile informant yet determined to continue searching for my tooth. I know the fate of the entire human race might depend on my success.

 

I am asking you now to join me, my love; your scientific rigor a necessary counterpoint to my passion for the hunt. Join me because the man’s words, while inane, are no doubt true.

 

The tooth is out there. And someday, we shall find it.

 

I wrote the whole thing on Word, copied it into a text, and sent it to Alma, now at work. I assumed she would read it sometime during lunch.  

 

Coming home that evening, Alma stepped through our door, shaking her head.

 

“You realize no one watches the X-Files anymore.”

 

“Then why did you make me binge-watch it last weekend?”

 

“I read Laura and her secretary most of your text. Now they also think you’re delightfully eccentric. Both of them want to meet you at the next holiday party.”

 

“You actually read them my text?”

 

“Why not?  You took all that time to write it, and I now have the cool husband. Don’t get any ideas, but I also showed them your picture. They said you looked kind of cute.”

 

Cool and kind of cute - I could live with that.

 

“You’ll have to point them out to me at the next holiday party.

 

“The hell with that. Besides, you have work to do. As a wise man once said, the tooth is out there. After the kids go to bed, we will merge your passion with my scientific rigor and test the veracity of that concept.”

 

As my father said, the great ones never stop telling stories. Up until now, I just never knew the reason why.