First, the backstory. I woke up a week ago with severe pain in my mouth. To be exact, the pain was in the lower right molar area. I’m not exaggerating; it was a constant pain. So, I started taking Tylenol Extra Strength pills to ease the pain. They worked for a couple of hours, but the pain wasn’t going away. After a couple of days, I decided to call my dentist. However, it was late Friday afternoon, and the office was closed.

The only option open to me was going to the urgent care location close to where I live. A few moments after my arrival, I was in an exam room explaining my anguish. The doctor said my right back molar has an abscess. She gave me a prescription for the pain and said to call your dentist first thing Monday morning.

I promised the doctor I would do what I was told. On Monday morning, I was in my dentist’s exam chair. She had done some x-rays, which meant that I had to see an endodontist. The next day, there I was after having a dental 3-D scan of my molar. The dentist said that the molar was cracked. That meant that they weren’t going to touch the tooth, since the crack would become abscessed again in a short period of time. She said that I had to see an oral surgeon.

The third day, there I was at Valparaiso Family Dentistry. It is located at 2005 Roosevelt, Suite B, across from McDonald's. I toyed with the idea of saying that I had a Whopper toothache.

A few moments later, Pat called my name. She assured me that they would take care of me. To be funny, I did say, “You aren’t going to hurt me, are you?” She just smiled as she prepped me for a panoramic x-ray scan. It was exactly like the one the day before. So, to impress her, I put my hands on the device and opened my mouth to bite down on a mouthpiece of the x-ray machine. I started to bite down before Pam was ready, to which she said, “Don’t bite my fingers.”

The scan took less than a minute. Then Pat took me to the exam room where Dr. Yousef would remove the molar. He numbed the lower right side of my mouth. I mentioned that I have traveled a great deal since going to graduate school at the University of Scotland in the late 60s. And I was trying to figure out his ethnic background. He replied that he wanted to know what my guess was. I didn’t think it was from the Stans or North Africa. I also mentioned that my podiatrist was from Lebanon, but I didn’t think it was from Lebanon. But I didn’t have the foggiest what Middle Eastern country he was from. It turned out it was Palestine.

Well, that began a long chat about discrimination against Palestinians in America. I told him that when I taught college classes for the last quarter-century, I would look at my roster before the first class. If I couldn’t pronounce a student's last name, I would be delighted. If I couldn’t pronounce their first name, I would be ecstatic. That meant that I was about to teach a class that was very diverse. Diversity is key to learning, whether in academia or in life in general.

I mentioned discovering my family in Myanmar a dozen years ago to Dr. Yousef. I told him about Ti Ti, my granddaughter and gave him my card containing a link to my website. In that essay, Ti Ti expressed they various forms of diversity made her who she is today.

Then Pat, Dr. Yousef, and I discussed the importance of diversity and how Trump disses people from different ethnic and/or religious backgrounds. America was founded on diversity and the freedom to live together.

However, Trump and his racist and sexist minions single out groups that aren’t WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Their term is White Christian Nationalist. If you aren’t like Trump and his MAGA followers, they should return to their countries.

Trump wanted to ban any Muslim from coming to the States, even if you are a citizen and were returning from a vacation or business trip overseas. That mindset continued with blacks in general and especially Haitian and Somali refugees who were here legally due to persecution in their countries.

Now, Trump's border control stormtroopers are killing, beating, and imprisoning Hispanics and any others who aren’t white in Minnesota. There have been thousands of Minnesotans arrested in the past couple of months. Trump calls them “the worst of the worst.” A five-year-old child and his father were arrested and sent to a prison in Texas. There were two American citizens shot to death for being “the worst of the worst.” Renée Good was shot 3 times, and Alex Pretti was shot 10 times. The issue isn’t that many Minnesotans are “the worst of the worst.” Our government is “the worst of the worst.”

After the three of us vented about the direction that Trump wants go, I said, “Look at the diversity in the room, a black, a Muslim, and a white Anglo-Saxon.” By this time, the shot had numbed the area where the molar was to be removed. Pat was ready to put a device to hold my mouth open.

I was ready for the procedure. Pat was on my left, and Dr. Yousef was on my right side, working at a computer with his back facing me. Then he asked, “What is Wolverton Mountain? Is it your company?” He happened to notice my card that I had given him and a link to an essay about Ti Ti. I laughed and said that it is just my website.

I explained that there was an old country song about a young guy who wanted to be with Clifton Clowers’ daughter. Regardless, the father has a shotgun and doesn’t want anyone around his daughter. He will stop her young lover from visiting her on Wolverton Mountain. This is the last verse of the song.

Pat knew the song. Essentially, the song is a metaphor about me and my drivenness. Dr. Yousef didn’t say anything to my response. I thought he was dealing with some dental problem. Finally, he turned around, and Pat put in the devices to hold my mouth open. Dr. Yousef looked into my mouth just before he began the extraction. In the background, I heard Wolverton Mountain being played. I couldn’t believe it.

Dr. Yousef started to deal with the abscessed molar. In a nanosecond, I felt something pop in my mouth. He had removed the molar’s crown. In fifteen seconds, the rest of the tooth was out. Then, Dr. Yousef said, “All done.”

Dr. Yousef

My dental assistant, Pat

This is the front desk.

Salimah

Tiffany

I went back to Valparaiso Family Dentistry a couple of days later to have a reenactment of the moment when Wolverton Mountain played during the extraction of my molar.

This is an old 45 record of Wolverton Mountain that hangs in my office.

This is an addendum to Pat and Dr. Yousef. We talked about diversity before the extraction of my molar the other day. It is critical for people discuss racism honestly. Whites, especially, need to process that issue before it is too late for them. In less than two decades, whites will be a minority group in America, and Islam will be the largest religious faith in the world.

A vast percentage of Americans don’t buy into Trump’s racial, religious, and ethnic mindset. If you haven’t made your feelings heard, do it now before we slip further into a country run by an autocratic White Nationalist.

Be like the driven guy who is driven to climb Wolverton Mountain.

Trump’s video