An Occasion Requiring Shoes

This was written using the visual prompt at Magpie Tales.

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I was sooo glad to get home and remove those instruments of torture!
I must be getting old! I mostly like to wear something comfortable, and if they are a little bit old and worn I don’t really mind. The heels on those shoes only look low, but when you’ve got to wear them for several hours they might as well be four-inch heels.

I do remember when I used to crip about in four-inch stiletto heels all day at work. Of course, I was eighteen, young and stupid back then and they really did make my legs look good, along with the mini skirts, and they made me taller.  I could actually run in four-inch heels! These days I’m built for comfort, not speed.

I keep these little black shoes strictly for weddings and funerals – and anything else that might crop up that requires a little style. They’re the only ‘dress’ shoes I own.

The weddings have been fewer and farther between, but the funerals are increasing in number. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re nearer the end of your life than the beginning. There will come a time when I will probably know more dead people than live ones. I don’t like funerals, but sometimes they can’t be avoided. When I turn my toes up I don’t want anyone coming to my funeral dressed in black, and I’m going to have Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum played at the end. If you’ve gotta go, you might as well go out with a good beat.

The School Dentist

Many British people of my generation are scared to death of the dentist. Ask any of them why, and they will tell you horrendous tales of visits to the school dentist when they were small children.

Our school dentist was situated in Player School, a short distance from our own school. I think they must have sent someone round to the individual schools to check childrens’ teeth, but I can’t honestly remember that part. I can remember as if it were yesterday the actual visit to the dentist. It’s like something out of a Dickens’ novel.

My older sister recently told me of her experience at the school dentist. Apparently she had to go to have a milk tooth pulled when she was in the Junior School. She tells me they all had to sit on chairs and the dentist walked along, told them to open their mouths and then hoiked out the offending tooth without any anaesthetic. All the kids were screaming and crying. He used the same tool for each child. No suggestion of sterilising or anything. That experience is burned into her brain too. She is absolutely terrified of dentists. She has false teeth now so it’s no longer a problem for her. She never went back to the school dentist, and had to be in total agony before she would even consider a visit to any dentist.

The day I went there were several of us sitting on little infant-school chairs in a corridor, all looking very worried. One of my bottom teeth beside my incisors had decayed. I didn’t have toothache or anything, and it was a first tooth, but they decided it had to come out. I could hear kids crying in another room. When it was my turn I had to go into the room and they told me to sit in a big, black funny looking chair. I asked a woman in a white coat if I could please have gas? She answered with a stern ‘No!’ I was terrified. Next they told me to open my mouth and they put a metal thing in there and started to jack my mouth open. I thought they were never going to stop and the top of my head would fall off. There were no words of comfort or explanation while all of this was happening. Next they pushed a black rubber mask onto my face. After that I don’t remember anything until I was being told to go and rinse my mouth out. I had to do this at a stone trough with an enamel cup on a chain attached to a cold water tap. I think we all used the same cup. It was like a production line in a factory. It’s a wonder we survived, really. I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough.

I never went back to the school dentist either, but I did manage to overcome my fear of dentists as a species. I’m still not easy with it all but I try to look after my teeth as I don’t want a mouth full of plastic. My dentist is a kind man who makes sure I’m not going to feel any pain. I still ‘white knuckle’ it though.

Thank goodness things had changed by the time my own kids visited the school dentist. Clean; hygienic; bright pictures on the wall; young, cheerful dental assistants full of comforting words and a small reward when the visit was over. It was not easy for me to stand beside my kids, with heart racing and sweaty palms, while they were in that chair, but it didn’t seem to bother them, thank goodness. Things have come a looooong way in the last fifty or so years.

The Nit Nurse

When I was at school we had regular visits from the nit nurse. She would set up shop in the cloakroom. This consisted of a bowl of Dettol-water and a comb. Each kid would be checked to see if they had nits, and if they did a card was given to them to take home. Everyone really hoped that they wouldn’t get a card as it meant that you were unclean and to be avoided at all costs. I don’t know if this happens in the schools in the UK today. It’s possibly gone the way of free milk and disappeared.

I now live in Australia and it is quite common for kids to get nits in the summer and has nothing to do with how clean you are, but back then it was the worst thing that could happen to you. I’ve done a bit of ‘nitting’ with the grandkids. Apparently head lice have no preference for clean or dirty hair – they are happy with either, so we were all misinformed. I never had nits as a kid and have never had them since…….yet. There’s a lot of misinformation about head lice.

I always had my hair plaited for school and I hated the nit nurse looking in my hair as she only ever undid one plait and then plaited it up again very loosely, and by the end of the day it would be sticking out all over the place. Mum always plaited super tight.

Many years ago my neighbour’s kids hung over the fence and said, ‘Hey, Sue, guess what we’ve got!’ I was expecting a bike or a rabbit or something but it was, ‘We’ve got nits!’ It kept me giggling for quite some time.

To this day, whenever I smell Dettol I think of the nit nurse. My nose is my time machine. For some people it’s music – and it is for me, to a degree – but smells can whip me back through time at hyperspeed.