Published: December 16, 2007 10:14 am         

Why are you looking down in the mouth?

There are times when it helps to know someone who has plenty of pull.

When I picked up the envelope and saw the return address, I had a gut feeling about what was in it ... and I was right.

It was a day that my mother and father and I had said we weren’t looking forward to, but only I had lived to see it.

Melodramatic? Yes, but the end of an era often deserves a dusting of melodrama. Some things shouldn’t be allowed to just fade away with no one taking notice of them.

Let’s start by going back to the time I went to visit a friend whose secretary said he was taking a bad tooth to the dentist that afternoon to have it put down.

With a slight smile that I interpreted as one of anticipation, she confided that her boss was mortally terrified of dentists.

Determined not to disappoint her, I first asked my friend why he was looking down in the mouth. Then I broke into a chorus of “The Yanks Are Coming.” I said he shouldn’t worry because his dentist was a man of good extraction and seemed to know the drill for handling any situation.

He looked silently upward, putting me in mind of Captain Binghamton when he used to ask, “Why me, Lord? Why is it always me?” in the old McHale’s Navy TV show.

After reminding my friend that we had been through some rough scrapes and assuring him that I would be pulling for him, I departed in the hopes that planning his revenge might distract him from his misery. (It didn’t.)

A fear of going to the dentist is one of mankind’s common burdens, but I’ve never suffered from it. That’s because my dentist was not only a skilled professional, but someone I literally grew up with. I knew him first as a trusted adult in whose care I would be absolutely safe, and he gradually became a beloved friend of my family ... as did his wife.

The envelope’s contents announced that Donald L. Kiser, DDS, had decided to retire.

I first knew him as “Doctor Kiser,” but he eventually became “Doc” and then “Don.” He continued to practice after what most folks would consider a normal retirement age ... but what is age, anyway? Don has been in the prime of his life ever since I’ve known him, and if either of us has gotten older, it’s me. I may actually catch up to him before long.

I once asked Don why he stayed with it ... already knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it in his words. He said it was because he loved what he did, and he loved his patients and the people who worked in his office.

“Thanks to all of you who have helped to make my life and practice what it has been,” he wrote in his farewell letter. “May God be as gracious to you as He has been to me.”

Some of his staff were my friends in school, and his hygienists were pleasant types that I enjoyed associating with (for as much as it is possible to have a conversation with somebody who has her hands in your mouth).

Don and I would talk for a few minutes about hunting, our friends or our faith, and other things that interested both of us.

We shared chuckles about the adventures his wife Pat and my dad had when they went on a field trip to pick up a car or to dinner and bridge club. Dad didn’t like to drive at night, Pat didn’t like to drive alone, both of them had a sense of humor, and they both liked to eat. They became great friends and had fun.

Pat and Norma Grooms were in my dad’s bridge club, and they adopted him. Dad lived to be almost 90, but you wouldn’t have known it to talk to him. His friends kept him young, and that included women like Pat and Norma.

Women loved my father, not just because he was tall, handsome, intelligent and charming, but also because he respected them, liked them and enjoyed their company. They knew it was enough, just to be friends and nothing more. Dad knew that limiting your friends to one sex or the other eliminates half of the friends that the Lord might otherwise have blessed you with.

Don has plenty of friends for the same reasons my father did.

He was happy for the friendship between his wife and my dad, and that’s another reason I respect him. Love cannot survive when mutual trust does not exist, let alone grow. It requires confidence not just in your partner, but also in yourself. I learned that from my parents, and I admire it when I see it practiced by others like Don and Pat Kiser.

One of my wisdom teeth actually grew in straight, and it lived comfortably in my jaw for years. But as my tooth and I grew older, more of it became occupied by fillings, and Don — himself a man of good extraction — kept after me to have it removed.

As long as it caused me no problems, I hung onto that tooth. But one Friday it began to act up. I’ve had things happen to me that hurt far worse, but I don’t believe any of them was more trying than that damn toothache.

I called Don’s office and learned that he was out of town on vacation, deer hunting way off in the deep woods. It was a real “Oh, (phooey)!” moment, so I went to the drugstore, bought a bottle of clove oil and braced myself for the ordeal of surviving the weekend.

Don phoned me early Saturday morning and said to meet him at his office in an hour. He had been informed of my predicament and drove in from hunting camp.

It couldn’t have taken him more than 10 seconds to work that tooth out (inflicting an absolute minimum of discomfort) but he apologized for having taken so long to do it. He said he usually gets the job done more quickly. Then he told me he was sorry he’d been out of town and unable to come and help me any sooner. Not once has he said, “I told you so.”

How you can repay someone like Don and Pat Kiser for decades of something that goes far beyond friendship, I don’t know. What I can do is tell you about them and the reasons why I love them.

Thanks, Don. Thanks, Pat.

May God bless you and keep you and make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He look upon you with favor and give you many more years of peace and happiness.