(This is a true story)

My brother in law across the street is many things:

A father.
A husband.
A son.
A brother.
A boater.
A hard worker.
A hard player.

One thing he is most certainly NOT is fond of the dentist.

It's funny. Here's a guy that I've seen pick up a rotting stinking 150 pound dead deer from his front porch without batting an eyelash, but he's a little nervous about going to the dentist.

Wait. That's not strong enough. Nor is the prior statement that he's "not fond" of the dentist. Let me see if I can put this in perspective. I think Todd would rather have a white hot rusty coat hanger jammed thru both of his eyes than go to the dentist.

So a month or so ago, he was having a little dental discomfort and broke down and went to the dentist. Said dentist told him he needed a root canal. Or four. Either way, he sucked it up and got the root canals done, and for that we were quite proud of him.

Not proud as in "You can pick out anything you want from the Wal-Mart toy section that's under fifty dollars" proud, but you know what I mean.

Fast forward to yesterday. Wednesday, the BIL and I had discussed the possibility of our two families going out for Mexican food together on Thursday and were set to go.

Then it was brought to GBD's and my attention that Nick was working and BIL had a meeting during dinner time, so the dinner was off for all we knew.

So I got home from work and recieved a phone call from GBD's middle sister saying that she was asked by the eldest sister (my neighbor) to call us and tell us that we weren't going out for dinner.

My reply was:

A) No shit. GBD and I have both talked to the queen and we both said that was fine.
B) Why is someone that is currently 200 feet from me calling someone six miles away to have them call me to tell me something I already know? Twice?

I called the Queen and asked her just that. She mentioned that in addition to what we'd previously discussed, another issue had come up at their casa. It seemed that the BIL had, without anyone's knowledge, gone to get his permanent crown installed yesterday afternoon. He did it this way so none of us would worry about him since we all know how fond he is of the dentist.

After covering all of that, he told this brief story. I will paraphrase, but I assure you that the result will be 100% accurate.

He went to the dentist, and everything was going along swimmingly. The office contained the Dentist himself, his top aide person, and two other nurse-type people.

As said Dentist was working on the crown and doing a little drilling, either the dentist slipped or the BIL did something like swallow or start doing the Alphabet Exercise with his tongue, but the result was the Dentist's drill inadvertently made contact with the fleshy area under the tongue right next to that little connecty thingy.

And by made contact, I mean that he stuck it into that spot so deep that the drill bogged down on him.

The dentist immediately ordered the two "other" nurses from the room and rushed to put in SEVEN STITCHES!!! Under his tongue!!!!

Are you kidding me? That's like one of those "I'd rather slide down a rusty razor blade into a vat of lemon juice" stories. It makes me shudder just typing it out like that.

To make the BIL feel better, we fetched him some Bruster's Ice Cream whilst he was at his meeting.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that a live vermin would have to crawl out of his mouth before he'd go back to the dentist now, and I'm not sure I blame him for that. I'm pretty sure that's how I would handle it anyway.