What About Dr. Albright... Part 2

Here is part 2, if you haven't read part 1, it should be here below on the main page.

Dr. Albright was on his way over. I called the guys and told them I wouldn’t make it to softball practice. I decided I’d dedicate my evening to working late in hopes to get into the good books of a new dentist. I’d make his gold crown for him and I’d do it as quickly as humanly possible.

“Hey! Who did your braces?” He said to my wife, Jammie, once he was in our home.

“Dr. Jarvis,” my wife informed him.

She got a quick understanding of his inability to understand social norms or personal space when he walked straight over to her and stuck his gloveless fingers into her mouth.

“I’m probably the best at orthodontics in the whole northwest region of the United Sates” he let us know. “There are a lot of things that I know that the regular orthodontists don’t because I practice general dentistry too.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s just get started so this doesn’t take us all night.”

I prepared the teeth models and everything as quickly as I could. My work was sloppy and ugly, but quick was what we both wanted, so quick was what he got.

“I saw that you had some guitars hanging in your living room,” he said. “Bet you’re not as good at guitar as me. I’ve been playing for longer than you.”

“Oh, really,” I said without raising my eyes from the teeth I was working on.

“Yeah, I’ll show you,” he said. “I have my guitar in my truck. You should go get yours.”

“No,” I resisted. “I better just work on this gold crown so I can get it done.”

Having him spend the next 45 minutes singing to me filled me with some mixed emotions. He wasn’t very good, but at least he wasn’t horrible. I encouraged him between every song. Listening to him sing La Bamba was, believe it or not, much more tolerable than listening to the ridiculous things he would converse about. I dug myself into a pit with my musical encouragement, though. He ran out of songs to play on his guitar, so he went back out to his truck and got his… can you guess? He came back with his clarinet. Yes, about the time I was halfway through with the process of making him a gold tooth, he was honking away on his clarinet for me. I found myself wishing he’d go back to bragging about himself and telling me how the world was out to get him.

Next thing I knew, Jammie and I were in the eye of the tornado. He had left. I knew he wasn’t going to be gone long, just long enough to get some tacos. We took a break to eat some Mexican food during the time that the gold crown had to sit in the furnace. Having a nice conversation over dinner was exactly what our evening needed.

To be concluded…