A “GLASS HALF-FULL” KIND OF GUY

JULY 30, 2025 – The time was exactly 5:00.

I’d already been on the road for close to an hour, foiled by three long construction-related slowdowns on my way to a 5:00 dental cleaning appointment with Michelle, my über-hygienist at Boger Dental on the far side of town. The trip normally takes half an hour. I’d been ready to bail at 4:45, but when I then called the dental office to explain my plight (and that I was ready to pull the ripcord), the assistant taking the call checked with Michelle and reported back, “Even if you wind up being 20 minutes late, she can still fit you into the schedule.”

“Great!” I said. Fifteen minutes later I was flying down the highway at 60, no more than 10 minutes away from the front door of the clinic. Except . . . a minute later, I encountered yet another slowdown at a road closure sign, with traffic being directed to the left and to the right, but with a long list of destinations either way in print too fine to read without getting rear-ended. By default I wound up going left, which, if nothing else, was consistent with my current political leanings. This simply led to another bumper-to-bumper jam, but with no signage in sight. Wholly unfamiliar with the local geography outside of the main drag, I could just as well have been in Dayton, Ohio.

Now, people who navigate by one map app or another would say (as my wife did hours later), “Why didn’t you just ask for an alternate route?” Are you kidding me? I’m at a busy intersection with no street signs, no traffic light, just temporary stop signs and a million cars whose drivers are caught in an unintentional game of chicken from all four directions, and I’m number five in my lane, and I’m supposed to what, figure out how to pull up the map app on my car screen and . . . do what? Next try to find the microphone icon, press it, yell, “Boger Dental!” and wait for the Wizard of Oz to tell me which way to turn? –all before I run into the car ahead of me or someone honks at me from behind? Excuse me, but I have a birthday coming up, and it involves being reminded that if I’m not a total Luddite, I’m an old-fashioned driver in the regard that I like to have my hands on the wheel at all times and have a flight plan fully filed before I take off—that is, knowing my route without having to rely on a voice telling me when and where to turn.

My phone rang (in “hands free” mode). It was my surveyor. We hadn’t talked in a week, but I’d emailed a message saying, “Give me a call when you have time; no rush.”

“Hi, Eric,” he said. “It’s Jesrin. How are you doing today?”

“Good, bad, good, bad . . . good.” I laughed.

“Uh oh,” said Jesrin, “but I counted three ‘goods’ against two ‘bads.’”

“Well, yeah, all medical stuff,” I said, “but in the grand scheme of things, pretty darn good. Anyway, I like to think of myself as a glass-half-full kind of guy.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said, humoring me. “I try to be that way too.” His response didn’t surprise me. In all our communications before and after I’d retained him, Jesrin had struck me as a guy who (a) knows what he’s talking about, and (b) honestly cares about his work and his clients. It didn’t hurt that he gave me a wholly reasonable estimate for a fairly involved engagement.

“Is this a good time to talk?” he asked.

“It’s a great time, actually, given that I’m stuck in traffic [at yet another construction site!].”

It turned out not to be a great time. Five minutes into the call it was interrupted by a call from Michelle at Boger Dental. I glanced at the clock. It was now 5:15.

“Are you close?”

“I just cleared my last traffic jam and am within easy sight of that huge ugly communications tower at the intersection of 55 and 694 [the tower being very close to the dental office]. I’m now able to exceed the speed limit by a factor of two on the approach to the tower. I’m now approaching . . . Xenium?. . . where I plan to turn right, correct?”

“Okay, great! You’re almost here.”

“Give me three minutes.”

“’kay. See you soon!”

That was before I reached the intersection of Xenium and 55, where I waited at a red light long enough to learn how to speak French from a 10-part online course, had such an opportunity been at my fingertips. As the seconds ticked by and accumulated into a minute, then two minutes, I was ready to howl (in French expletives). Highway 55 to my right was closed, which accounted for the last two big delays, and thus, there was zero traffic from the westbound lanes. I could have easily crossed the eastbound lanes—absent the red light. There were no cars behind me. My car clock now registered 5:20.

What to do? Believe me, I’m generally a very law-abiding person. I rarely exceed highway speed limits by more than 10 mph, unless I’m in CT and it’s necessary to avoid getting run over—or I’m late for a dental appointment and after one construction-related slowdown after another, am finally on a stretch of highway with zero traffic. And I can recall only one time that I ever (intentionally) ran a red light—at about one in the morning during a blizzard when Beth and I were the only people out and about, returning from some social engagement, as I recall. Today, however, I was so worked up by the stupid light, I was prepared to make another exception . . . “except” . . . my version of the Hippocratic Oath—“Whatever the hell you do, don’t make things worse”—came mind. That and the desire to live to my next birthday.

Just two hours earlier, my ophthalmologist had apologized profusely for his delay in getting to me, explaining that the previous patient had taken twice as long because everything had had to be translated. I told the good doctor “no problem at all,” and that since I was by definition a patient, I had to be patient. Now, as I waited for the (damn) light to change, I had to confront the fact that maybe I wasn’t so patient.

I turned up the air-conditioning . . . and the fan . . . and as if on cue, the light finally changed. I stepped on the gas almost hard enough to squeal the tires, as I carved a nice big GS (giant slalom) lefthand turn and schussed my way to the next off-ramp, where I hit the light just in time, skittered around the turn to the right, then 300 feet to . . . another interminable red light. But at least I was right around the corner from my destination.

Wait, wait, wait, wait . . . When the green arrow appeared, I was out of the starting gate like Ingemar Stenmark going for gold in the slalom. Three quick turns and my car was in a parking slot facing “Boger Dental.”

For an almost-71-year-old geezer stuck in the seat of his car for 90 minutes, I was able to move pretty damn fast. I buzzed into the dental office, where Michelle greeted me with her usual good cheer.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” I said, “along with a few other people on the highway.”

She laughed and led me straight back to the operatory. To make up for lost time, I jumped into the chair, opened my mouth and said “Ah!” Well, okay, I wasn’t quite that theatrical—or efficient—but when Michelle did tell me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue, I said “Ah!” without her first having to ask me to do that. I knew the drill (no pun intended) and figured I could recover at least a second or two by anticipating the request. During the actual cleaning, I also controlled my wimp-wincing, which I estimated saved another half minute, between my “Hhhhs” and Michelle’s, “Oh. Sorry, I’ll turn the pressure down a bit . . . Is that better?” and my “Uh-h-uh.”

Being the über-hygienist that she is (and dental researcher and dental school educator), with her exhaustive education, training, experience and exemplary patient rapport, Michelle worked my teeth over—entirely pain free—with time to spare. (She’d called her next patient to ask if she could wait an extra 10 minutes; the patient, being a true patient, said, “No problem.”)

As the Bard said, “All’s well that ends well,” and in the case at hand, Michelle rewarded me with her highest compliment: “Your teeth and gums look great! The best I’ve seen them!”

When I walked out of the dental office, I felt as though it were Super Tuesday and I’d just won the Virginia presidential primary (Michelle is originally from Virginia Beach, VA). I could add this to my earlier victories in Texas (the most recent test results revealing that my MM numbers are exactly where they have been and belong), Colorado (ophthalmology appointment and battery of tests revealing the lowest eye pressures I’ve ever had, resulting, most likely, from the stent implants that had been done in conjunction with cataract surgery early this spring), and California (tick panel (blood test) results today revealing Ehrlicia—a tick-borne disease treatable with doxycycline; this might sound counterintuitive, but this outcome constitutes a definitive diagnosis of my current acute ailment producing a range of unwelcome symptoms from lethargy (though today I was feeling remarkable feisty), extreme headaches, and perhaps most disturbing, a hammer-blow to neutrophiles and WBCs. Quite miraculously the “system” worked beautifully, and by 7:30 this evening I had in hand, a bottle of the magic pills. I’m on a tear!)

On the more relaxed drive home, I eschewed the news and listened to classical MPR. Playing was “Rounds for String Orchestra” by David Diamond—a piece commissioned in 1943 by Dimitri Mitropoulos, famous long-time conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony (now the Minnesota Orchestra)[1], and premiered by the MSO in 1944. Mitropoulos had asked Diamond to compose some “happy music” in contrast to all the somber works reflecting the on-going tragedy of WW II. I found the piece to be quite ridiculous musically but appreciated the Maestro’s attempt to be “upbeat” in very “downbeat” time[2]. In any event, the music was a quaint form of punctuation to my self-description as “a glass half-full kind of guy.”

In all seriousness, I’m filled to the brim with gratitude.

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Mitropoulos, born in Athens, the son of an owner of a leather goods store, was a child prodigy at the piano but also an accomplished composer and, of course, conductor. In 1930 he took a gig conducting the Berlin Phil, and when the star soloist at the piano came down sick, Mitropoulos assumed the role—Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3—and conducted from the piano; one of the first times that had ever been done. He came to America shortly thereafter, became a citizen and conducted the BSO before going to Minneapolis. From Minneapolis he went to the New York Phil and also the Met.

[2] One has to wonder how much Mitropoulos or, more specifically, Diamond, who was Jewish, knew at the time of the Holocaust, and if “not much,” whether the full truth had been known, Mitropoulos would have asked Diamond to write such a piece and if so, would Diamond have accepted the commission? As I listened to the “happy music,” I tried “hearing it” in a “sad” mode–i.e. minor key.