Braking for Grief

I took my kid to the dentist yesterday.

And she was an excellent dentist, let me say that up front. I was could not have been more impressed with this dentist. The kid went in terrified and came out eager to go back next Thursday and get her next filling. The kid never had a moment’s anxiety and suffered very little pain – this despite getting her first root canal, at age six.

(Did I mention Fort Smith has no fluoride in its water? Because that would be, you know, government interference in our lives or a huge tax burden or something – hell, I don’t know. We’ve been brushing and flossing and feeding her fluoridated water from Wal-Mart, but apparently it’s not enough.)

Anyway: what I started to say. She’s an excellent dentist, but she is, like all dentists in Fort Smith, a fundamentalist Christian.

Why every single dentist in Fort Smith is a fundamentalist Christian I cannot tell you. Maybe it’s just demographics. But they are. They pipe Christian music into their waiting room, they have little Jesus wallpaper designs, the dental technicians have conversations about how they’ll choose their new homes by prayer: “We’ll live where the Lord leads us,” one said to the other was she was working on the kid’s jaw yesterday.

What got me, though, what got to me, was how celebratory they were about Falluja.

They were acting like it was some football game.

They were giggly and cheerful and all hi-fiving each other, and I’m trying to gain some perspective and say, okay, all right, maybe they’re just thinking this means our guys get to come home sooner – but I just can’t get my head to the place where you could call yourself a follower of Christ and still think it would be okay to say Yay, yippee, we’re killing a whole bunch of people, we’re burning people alive, we’re slaughtering folks, hee hee, it’s great.

And then there’s Mr. Falwell, who says we should call on Jesus himself to bless it:

http://www.baptiststandard.com/postnuke/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=2518

(Via Infinite Stitch, who is doing her usual brilliant work: http://stitch.blogs.com/the_infinite_stitch/)


I’ve decided I want to get myself a bumper sticker made: WARNING: I BRAKE FOR GRIEF.

Because I’m going to need it, living in this country over the next four years.