Friday...what else can I say?

Hope you all have had a good week. I have had a tough one. I bruised my ribs on Sunday playing basketball. If you have ever hurt your ribs, you know what I am saying. The pain will bring tears to your eyes. If you haven't... well... everything hurts - when you sneeze, when you cough, when you bend over, when you sleep and roll over (by the way I haven't slept since Sunday night because it is impossible to sleep). Leaning over people to fix their teeth is very difficult: you can't take a deep breath, you can't touch the area at all.

So this week I have been living on ibuprofen like clockwork. But last night I think I turned the corner. I am still very tender and I am can't take a deep breath without pain, but I don't have to pop pills every 4 hours.

I know you have been dying to find out about the football game last night. Not college football - the Orangewood Christian School's middle school tackle football game. Well, we had a bit of a setback. Yeah, the game didn't really go our way. To be honest with you, they creamed us. The final score was 39-6 and it wasn't that close. It was 33-0 at half and then the other team called off the dogs and we scored on the last play of the game.

I watched Invictus last night. This was with Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman about a Rugby team in South Africa. It was okay. I liked it but it was a little too predictable. Country is in turmoil. New black president. Lots of tention. Rugby team stinks. Everyone starts liking the rugby team, the country has a lot less tension and more unity as the team starts to get better. The team wins the world cup and everything is great.

Okay, I will get right to it today. I have always said this blog is about life. Most of the time the life of a dentist revolves around... well... dentistry.

Today, I am still doing dentistry, but my mind keeps wondering off to my friend.
Let me digress and tell you that when you get to my age (the ripe old age of 41), a lot of people that you know you call friends, but you haven't seen them in a bunch of years. For instance, I don't see many of my high school friends because I am not Catholic anymore. A lot of us still live in town but they are probably running in the Catholic circles. School, sports, confirmation class, all that stuff. I see them but not all the time. I still enjoy their company but we don't see each other much.

I have people that I know from college that I might not have seen in a long time, but love it when I see them at a game. And guys/gals from dental school I really like. We have this very special bond. We have gone through the toughest part of our lives together. We are a bit of a band of brothers/sisters. So yes, I call these guys my friends. I may have seen them only 5 times since dental school, but they are still my friends. Do I really know them now? Probably not. Do I know what is going on in their house? No.

Well, this week I found out one of my friends was caught cheating on his wife. Now I have not talked to this guy in a couple of years and it happened awhile ago, but I am just finding out about it now. Is it the first time one of my friends has cheated on his wife? Unfortunately not.

And like I said, I like the guy, we had great times together, but I don't know what is going on in his house. But every time it happens, there is much discussion around my office. I always start a discussion with my assistant about what she thinks.

If you haven't already figured this out, in my operatory, we feel comfortable talking about everything. I feel like as long as you talk with the patient - not around the patient - they get into it. A lot of times they will make me stop working so they can say something. Or they will wait until our procedure is done and then give us their opinion. It is kind of fun. Anyway... we started talking about this guy.

My assistant has been happily married to her present husband for 25 years; they have a very open and honest relationship. This is her 2nd marriage. Her first husband was - and still is - a shmuck. He was cheating on her while she was in the hospital having their second child. I would say she is jaded but honest; she would yell, "I'm a realist!" Then she would say "Men are men, " or "Men are all jerks."

The more I live and the more I talk to people, and the more I hear what my patients are going through and what my college classmates are going through... I would tend to agree. Okay not all of them but...

I ask her, "don't you think, in times like these, men are being bombarded with sex in magazines, on TV shows, commercials, the Internet?" I said that life is like a catalog. Remember the story about when SEARS was struggling with one of their international stores because people weren't buying their stuff? They put out a catalog and everyone saw all the things they didn't have, and they bought like crazy.

I was thinking that men would be a lot happier if they would just love their wives. But when everything is a digital catalog to everything they are "missing," it is tough battle. Now my assistant (who is jaded, remember) calls bullsh!@#$%$t on that one. She says what about in the time of the Depression when people didn't have TV and magazines and the Internet, and it was still going on then? (What do I know what was going on in the Depression? I had to shut up.)

I am more of a half-full kind of guy and believe people CAN be integrous and faithful. 'I mean lets not kid ourselves, marriage is hard. It is about love and COMMITMENT. I am committed to my wife and she is to me. I know it is not always going to be great, not because of anything she did, but because life is hard. But if we both know that life is hard and we both know that we are committed to each other, we can feel a little easier that the other person is not shtupping the neighbor (and when she looks at all my Internet history and checks all my emails and texts, it also helps). Am I around women all the time? Yes! Do I have a hot body that some women find irresistible? Yes!
But...

My assistant says, "It is what it is." So I talk to her about her daughter. I say, "What about her? Do you really not have any faith in your son-in-law? Do you have any hope for their marriage?" She does say that she talks to them about how hard marriage is and how it has to be a commitment. But she says, kind of off the cuff, "But if he cheats, she will just kick his ass to the curb."

I don't know if that is a way to get into marriage. I mean, if you think all men are jerks and it is bound to happen, why get married? Why get excited about her wedding? I don't know; I want to believe in more. And I want to say that because I am a Christian and I hang around men with conviction that it won't happen in my circle of friends, but it already has. Hell, it even happens to pastors, for crying out loud.

Okay I have to finish this up. I know it is Friday and I don't want it to be very heavy, so I am going to stop. But I haven't even talked about women or what happens after an affair. Like, that grass is going to be greener or something. Maybe later...

Do you have any thought? Have you been cheated on? Did you cheat?


Have a great holiday weekend,
john