Positive Thinking - Laughing Gas Memory

I'm telling myself that I need to be more positive, that if I am going to write, that I should write something positive, and steer myself away from all the negative descriptions I have been milling about, over and over, about how negative the description of my life can be. I realize it's a matter of language that forms the way you describe how you feel. I can just as easily pick out positive things to write about instead of the tried and true go-to negative things—all these negative things, like wet in a rain forest.

I'll try now, instead, to look less, rather than look harder. Looking too hard can strain your vision, and cause the world to appear coated in purpled anxiety. A Purple Haze. All around. I don't know if I'm coming up or down. Jimi Hendrix. Now there. See. That's a start. Positive things are still in my brain. They're leaking out like steam. I just have to keep chipping away through the layers of hardened mucus in my brain to make the steam-hole bigger, so these positive things can fill this thought chamber and choke me dead.

A positive thought escapes, and this one's a memory.

About ten years ago, I chipped my front tooth... okay I'm embarrassed to admit, but for the sake of reading something fondly later... I chipped my tooth on the sidewalk when I fell while rollerblading. I played roller hockey then, but even now, I still enjoy rollerblading, casually. It's fun. Oh whatever. I don't have to feel guilty about something I like doing. It's my positive memory anyway.

Ok, so, I chipped a chunk off my front tooth while rollerblading, and I went to the dentist a few days later to get it checked out. They decided that they could mix some epoxy and tooth-color together and build out the missing part of my front tooth... which is quite magical and unnatural, and the realization of how strange and fascinating living in a future where you can color-match fake teeth with dirty, old-colored real teeth must have set the tone for the Nitrous Oxide which was just beginning to be pumped into my nose, which I was told would help me relax and make my mouth feel numb.

I had never had laughing gas before, and when the dentist asked if I was feeling anything yet, I told him no... because really, I didn't feel anything yet. Even when he poked at my gums with his latex fingers, I told him that I could still feel them. He responded by telling me that he was going to turn the gas up a little bit, which he did, and then he turned to ask the assistant how the epoxy and tooth colors were mixing and matching. I laid back in the dentist chair with the rubber laughing gas cup over my nose and stared off into the medium-sized office landscape painting that was hanging on the wall near my feet.

The gas streamed through the metal valvessssssssssssssssss.
Mumbled-rumbled dentist's wordsssssssssssssss.
I felt myself moving. Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssslowly.
Sssssssssomehow floating into the landsssssssssssscape painting, wondering if thissssssssssssss is what dying feelsssssssssssssssss like, because the way I imagined dying was sssssssssssssssssimilar to the way I was unable to talk or move my body, which would explain why everything looked darker but felt more ssssssssssssssssserene, like I'm asssssssssssssssssleep and dreaming about being awake, but with my eyesssssssssssssss still open and lying in a dentist'sssssssssssssssssssss chair. I wonder what the dentist and his asssssssssssssssssistant would do if they accidentally had killed me? I wonder if anyone has ever died in thissssssss dentist'ssssssssss chair like thisssssssssss before?

Mumble. Rumble. Mark.
Mark? Can you hear me?

Yess.

Whew! Good. You were gone there for a little bit. I think we're ready to start. Open wide.

Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggggurgle.

My broken tooth was patched.
My smile was repaired.
Something positive. There.