the opportunist (part 1)

The brim of Telly’s fedora taps me on the brow as he peers into my mouth.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” John asks as our ninety-two-year-old neighbor. 

Telly’s eyebrows lift his hat.  “Mostly.”  

Toby is balanced on John’s head, using his tail as a cantilever as he leans with John to see what’s going on with the drill and the clothespin in my mouth.

View from the dentist’s chair.

The old drill prospecting for cavities is connected to one end of a jointed swivel arm.  A metal cable loops around pulleys at the base of the drill and the joint in the arm, and then it cycles into and out of a round enamel housing where a motor buzzes like a hive.  I’ve seen period pictures of such contraptions from the 1940’s and 50’s, in the trade magazines my usual dentist has in his waiting room for patients to read.  When he’s not on vacation in Cabo.

The fedora bats me again on the head.  

“Hold this for me, will you?” Telly asks and hands John his hat.   

“You look different without that,” John says. 

Telly chuckles.  “I’m sure.  I only take my hat off for three things: coffee and looking into mouths.”

The rest of us wait. 

“You said three things,” John finally says what I can’t.

“I can’t get anything over on you.”  Telly laughs as he repositions my clothespin.   

“Your hat,” John says, looking inside it.  “It’s got some writing in it.  Whoa!  It’s FILLED with writing.  What is this?  It looks like a giant cheat sheet.”  He laughs.  “When I was a kid, I used to write my spelling words on the bottom of my shoes before tests.”

Telly explains that his late wife Alexi penned it for him a second time when he lost the original.

“The original what?”

“The original noggin-shaped manuscript.  Alexi knew there would be times and places she couldn’t be with me.  So she gave me my own cheat sheet—to borrow a phrase.”

“So it IS a cheat sheet,” John ribs him.  “Let’s see.”  He turns the hat to catch the light.  "It says here to love your neighbor, but remember who shares your bed at night.”

There is a twinkle in Telly’s eye.  “Alexi had a wonderful sense of humor.”

“Honor your parents but obey your wife.  I like it.”

“Unfortunately, some of the words haven’t traveled the years as well.  Sweat and wear has all but erased her definition of a good husband.  Which might not be altogether a bad thing.  Her’s was a tough one to live up to.”

“Here we go,” John says.  “The things of greatest worth can be had,” he reads, “but none of it can be bought.  Hmm.  That one sounds a little Zenish.”

Telly laughs.  “Or McCartney.  The hat is all about love.  But it speaks with philosophy, holy commandment, marital tenets, and a touch of smart-ass.”

“Here’s one underlined in red.” 

“Oh boy,” Telly says to me under his breath. 

“Meaningful comes before meaning.”  John reads at the tip of his finger.  “I make its meaning; you make it meaningful.”

“Alexi was referring to her life, its overarching meaning.  And she was suggesting that I might have something to do with its meaningfulness.”

“I like it.  But what does it mean?”

Telly sighs heavily as though he’s been asked to condense the dictionary into just a few words.  “Honestly, I don’t know if I can tell you.”

“Seriously?”  John laughs hard.  “As much as you like to pontificate?”

“It’s the sort of thing best understood by considering someone’s actions and motivations.  Alexi is saying that I made her life worth living.  But what she means, is that her interest in me and her actions toward me made her life meaningful.  Or more meaningful.  I’m sure the Beatles could say it better in a song.”

“But why the hat?  Why did she write all this in it?”

“The hat is also supposed to make me mindful of what I had with her.”

“So you wouldn’t look at other women?” John asks.

“That might have been the motivation.  But it needn’t have been.  I never looked at another woman, except to have a conversation or extract a tooth.”

“So they’re words to live by.”

“Well, words she wants me to live by.  She’s not asking everyone to prescribe to her perspective and her values.  Just me.  Although if everyone did, I’m sure the world would be a better place.  Alas,” he says with nostalgic flair, “There is only the one hat.”

“Here’s another one,” John says.  “Money is a concept.  What the hell!”

Telly smiles at our friend’s knee-jerk rejection.  “That one?” he says.  “I suppose the gist of it is: there is too much money in the world.”

“What?” John cries. 

Toby mewls. 

I launch a cotton ball across the room.  The absurdity of the comment lifts my back off the chair, my hands from the arm rests.  But the dental instrument in my mouth compels me to let the madman speak his mad thoughts. 

“The real problem,” John says playfully, “is there is too little of that money in my pocket, and too much in the pockets of the one percent.” 

“I don’t know, John.”  Telly winks at me.  “The wealthy one percent might be doing you a favor by holding onto all that wealth.”

“Doing me a favor?  Doing me a favor?”  John calls on his former oratory skills as a preacher.  But the poor man’s indignation gets the better of him and he can hardly speak.  At once, Toby drops to all-four and gives John’s head a quick baker’s pat to knead out the furrows in his brow.  “Doing me a favor?” he asks again.

            While the drill hums merrily along, Telly actually turns his head. 

Away. 

“Yes,” he says calmly.  “Read the hat for yourself.  Too much wealth and too much focus on one’s financial portfolio can come with great cost.”

When Telly finally looks back at my gaping mouth, he frowns like he just remembered something he should have been paying greater attention to.  

“How can you say that with a straight face when the whole world is on the brink of economic Armageddon?  Hey Loch, is his face straight?  I can’t see.”

I give John a thumbs-up.

 “You see,” Telly says thoughtfully, “money isn’t wealth—real wealth—unless you hold onto it.  And if you hold onto it, you forfeit opportunity.”

“Not the opportunity to make more money,” John argues.

Solid point, I corroborate with my thumbs. 

“Think about this,” Telly says.  “Your Ben Franklins are just strips of paper.  But it is agreed that they represent some value in the bank so that we can use them to buy things.  It’s more convenient than herding your cow into an Apple store to trade for an ipad.

“But whether you buy and sell with paper and coins or cows and grain, the more of it you have, the more it demands of you.  Can you imagine the wealth of Musk or Gates in terms of cows?  Musk and Bezos would have to step up their colonization of Mars for grazing needs alone.”

“The idea is preposterous,” John says.

“That’s my point.  The more you have, the more effort it takes to keep up with it.”

“I respectfully disagree.  Because of the wealth I inherited from my Aunt Giselle, I now own my house and car outright.”

“And that ownership?”  Telly’s expressive eyebrows pull back like a stage curtain.  “That’s a concept, too.”

“Telly, man, I love you.”  John smiles as he tries again to rub his head, and frowns when he keeps striking fur.  “But you are just wrong.  What is mine is mine.”

Telly’s face creases with amusement.  He keeps his back to John, but I can see the dentist’s hilarity, behind the scenes, where I really do wish he would pay more attention to the patient in his chair.

“Forgive me, John, if I start to sound too much like you when you had a pulpit.  But if you believe in God—or aliens on Haley’s Comet seeding planets with the stuff of life—how can you own what he, or they, have wrought.  Unless the bill of sale for your house is signed by the Almighty, the deed is just another social construct recognizing the address at which you receive mail and for which you pay taxes.  If the Maker didn’t sell it, you didn’t buy it.  Your only birthright is the opportunity—or opportunities—you are lucky enough to stumble upon or, in the case of you and Aunt Giselle, be born into.”

“Well…” John’s enthusiasm sags discernably.  “I still got the money.”

“You do.  And you paid your inheritance taxes.  Good job.  Because you embraced your opportunities and paid off your banknotes.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“I am.  But I’m also asking you to think outside the bank account and consider the character you forge over a lifetime.  When you leave this life and forfeit everything to family and state, the only thing that still belongs to you—the only thing that ever belonged to you—is your character.”

“I’m satisfied with who I am.”  John sounds oddly defensive.

“You should be.”

“Are you saying character-development is the meaning of life?”

Telly shakes his head.  “I can’t tell you the meaning of your life until you leave in a chariot of fire or the next passing of the comet.  Death defines your life.  And because I like you and would like to see you work on your character a little longer, I am perfectly content, for the time being, that your life have no meaning.”

The meaning of my life has been redacted to protect its meaning-in-progress.

Telly and I can hear John’s inner kettle starting to boil. 

“John, I’m just having fun with you.  I’m not trying to get under your skin.  God knows.  But you read the writing in the hat, and you asked me what it means.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask you about the rest.”

Telly rubs fine sandpaper over my new filling and tilts my chair back upright.  “All done,” he tells me. 

I rinse.  Then spit. 

“I want you two to know,” I say, “just how much it hurt to sit here and not be able to say anything when the two of you are discussing something I might have a thought or two about.” 

“Oh?” Telly says.  “What are your two thoughts.”  He is just tickled by himself.

“One: I can’t just email my creditors and tell them to write off my debt because I’m such a swell guy.  Two: why didn’t it hurt when you turned my mouth into a construction zone and gave me nothing more to block the pain than a clothespin on the tongue?  Three…”

“You said two.”

“AND THREE,” I demand.  “Where can I get a hat like that?”

Telly holds up his hand.  “So, one: you may have missed an implicit—albeit key—point.  While money is a concept, debt, unfortunately, is very real.  Two,” he says, moving right along.  “Did the clothespin work?  You seem kind of upset you’re not in more pain.”

“It did work.  But how did you know it would work?”

“Just a little trick I picked up in the Korean War when I was asked to pinch my tongue with my own fingers while a guy took out an abscessed tooth with a pocketknife.  MY tooth.”

John and I exchanged humbled looks.

“I used a similar technique back in the states when I worked in pain management.  And three,” he says and takes back from John that which is his.  “Get your own hat.”  He puts the seasoned fedora back on his head.

“You do realize you have just referenced yet another career to add to your long list of professions.  Pain manager, dentist….”

“Taxman,” John adds.

“Tax preparer,” Telly begs for specificity.  “George Harrison never wrote a song about the guy who prepares your taxes.”

“And mason.”  John adds yet another profession to the list.  “Mattie Philps sits behind me at church, and she told me you rebuilt one of the brick walls of her house.”

“I saw an opportunity to kill a solid week.”

John shakes his head emphatically.  “Miss Mattie said by the time you were done, you had added on a whole new room and a half-bath.”

“I like to build things.”

I ask him, “What else is on that list things you like to do?”

Telly takes a moment to consider.  “Slide down firehouse poles, police communities, teach history to middle-schoolers.”

“Telly.”  John jumps down from his seat and starts rinsing and spitting, even before his time in Telly’s chair.  “Usually, a person sticks with one job for twenty or thirty years and then retires.”  His tone is almost accusational.

“I follow the opportunities.”

“You should be considering retirement.”

“I have retired.  Several times.”

“Then you’re doing something wrong.”

“I’m trying to live a meaningful life.”

“Are we…”  John stops before he can get started.  “Have you…”  Still turning his key in the ignition.  “What is it?  Are we talking about the meaning of life or a meaningful life?”

Telly hesitates, forcing John to wait on him.  “Those are two different ideas.  One points to a definition I don’t know, and the other suggests a value that only you can know.”

John rubs the cat on his head.  “I’m confused.”

I take a turn and ask Telly if it is really necessary to change professions so many times to have a meaningful life.

“Of course not,” he says.  “I could have had a perfectly meaningful life if I had kept pulling teeth.  Same thing if I had remained at the Department of Transportation.  Or NASA.”

“What did you do for the DOT?” John asks.

“Are you kidding?” I commandeer.  “What did you do at NASA?”

“Cut grass,” he says to John, “and built rockets,” he says to me.  “Both were rewarding in their own right.”

“Rockets!  How in the world do you go from rockets to cutting grass?”

“This might be a good time to tell you that meaningful employment is only one variable in the equation for a meaningful life.”

“Yeah…yeah,” I say, waiving off the other variables.  “Do you have any pictures from your space days?”  

“Are you asking me if I can substantiate my claim of a paycheck from the space agency?  Not exactly.  I could if I still had my old NASA cap.  But a certain co-worker—who also wanted a hat like mine—thought it would be personally satisfying to throw it in with the satellite we were trying to get into space.”  He looks up, past the ceiling, to infinity and beyond.  “If he couldn’t have it, he didn’t want anyone to have it.”

“That’s certainly more inventive than the dog eating your homework,” John gives him.  “But it’s not exactly proof.”

Telly scratches his chin.  “I guess you could just speak with him.”

“Who?” I ask.  “The guy who sent your proof into space?  Do you still stay in touch?”

“I try not to, but he lives in town, on the other side of Cherry Street.”

“That’s within walking distance.”

“I know.”  The old guy moans.  “I left NASA, in part, to get away from Archibald.  And darned if that rascal didn't follow me.”

“Archibald,” I repeat the name to myself.  “Would you mind terribly—”

“If I told you where he lives so you can go there and verify my previous employment?” Telly finishes for me.  He sounds a tad disappointed to learn that our confidence in his words has its limitations. 

“Yeah.”  John doesn’t back down.

 Telly writes something and hands me a business card for a funeral home.

“What’s this?  Did someone die?”

“I used to buy these things in bulk when I was a director at a funeral home.  Waste not want not.”

“Funeral home?”

The old guy appears weary of my growing disbelief in his expanding resume.  “Here, take that silly clothespin off your tongue.  I think it’s cutting off the blood to your brain.”

“Before I leave, tell me what I owe you?”

“Nothing.”

“You just performed a procedure that would earn my regular dentist a good chunk of money.  And twenty percent of that chunk would come out of my pocket.  What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” he says again. 

“Same crazy price he charged to do my taxes,” John says. 

“I charge nothing when I volunteer at the downtown dental clinic on Wednesdays, and I charge nothing for friends.  We are still...”  He tips his head down to peer over his glasses.  “...friends.  Aren’t we?”

“Totally.”

“Then stop making such a big deal of it.  Taking care of a tooth for you made this day more meaningful for me.”  He turns to John with a hint of the get-evenist.  “And it will add even more meaning to the day to get the homeowner with a deed from God and an ache in his tooth in my chair.”

The look of WHAT?