Torture or noblesse oblige.
There is no useless knowledge - there will always be a situation in which it will be useful.
And when you have to do the fucking thing - the opportunity to use forgotten knowledge increases many times.
Let me demonstrate the above with a half-forgotten episode of my life.
So, in the early 90s, the first stage of emigration - exams for the profession.
And if the doctors are more or less clear: three examinations for a doctor, one exam - a three-day marathon - for a license and forward, into the slavery of the internship, then for dentists the way to the license is another.
The state of California allows them to take theoretical exams, then practical and, after successful passing them, issues a license to the dentist, the right to work in the specialty.
At first glance - dentists are easier, their path is easier and shorter.
But this is far from the case: theoretical exams are quite possible to pass.
But here is practical... a completely different thing, expensive and complicated.
The candidate must lead his patients, bring his tools and materials, the assistant – in a word, everything.
This is a costly pleasure, I must say, especially for poor immigrants.
By the way, the most expensive in all this are the patients.
They must be found, examined and prepared, paid for the road, accommodation, food, compensation - in a word, it is easy to get money.
A distraction: and all this without a guarantee of success, less than 50% passed this exam from the first time, the exam was held rarely, twice a year, the fee for it - something in the area of a thousand, in that money...
So it’s not surprising that my childhood friend, Wendy, asked me to help. The tooth. The mine. A healthy tooth, without a single seal and crown - under the golden crown, the assignment of the exam. And I agreed, without thinking about it: the concept of friendship and immigrant solidarity dictated to do just that, and not otherwise.
The boring road from Los Angeles to San Francisco in an old American dandelion, stopped with friends, I slept in the passing room on the bench - in a word, luxury and more.
Exam in the morning. Vienna is nervous, clear thing, but with the assistant he was lucky, knowledgeable and skillful.
Equipment, materials – but most of all he was lucky with the patient: I myself from a family of dentists, never afraid of them, a calm experienced patient, reassuring the doctor – everything went well from the beginning.
Vienna, a dentist in the third generation, very skillfully gave me anesthesia, I was cemented, the procedure was long, several hours, each stage is checked by examiners, we move to the final stage, we dressed the crown and cemented, glowing with gold, I go to the final check.
And here something went wrong...
The anesthesia ended, or the exam lasted longer and Wena did not calculate whether he had to update it - who knows.
This final check was also the most fundamental.
and careful.
After looking at the X-rays and examining the crown from the outside, the examiner began to check the degree of deepening of the crown in the gums. The gums, awakened from anesthesia and rich in nerve endings.
The first touch of the sharp probe was extremely painful, I involuntarily strained.
It did not go unnoticed, the examiner stopped and asked dissatisfied:
Do you hurt? Patients should not feel anything, you did not have anesthesia?? to
I did not hurt, sorry, I just didn’t expect, please continue.
Friend, and for friendship what you do, I will tolerate.
Manda...
It had to be endured for a long time, for an eternity, for five to seven minutes, the Inquisitor in a white coat methodically and mercilessly ticked with a sharp probe, spotting the edges of the crown.
Millimeter by millimeter, across the periphery of the crown, the sharp needle was injected into me dozens of times.
It was torture.
Which I had to endure. Moreover, not to show that I am hurt.
And that was when I used my useless book knowledge.
Revolutionary Camus managed to deceive psychiatrists in such a situation — but he was almost handed out by enlarged pupils.
I closed my eyes tightly and imagined myself as a Spartan young man whose lion had taken away a piece of his liver.
Samurai during Harakiri.
A deep slow breath, to relax the muscles, to count to a hundred and back, said about himself the prayer "Listen, Israel!", mentally covered the examiner with the most dirty blasphemy in all the languages known to me, squeezed the handles of the chair under the sheet...
I endured.
The torture stopped precisely when I began to think about putting a dental chair on my cat’s head.
Then I realized that I had boundaries and I visited them.
Wendy suspects something:
You are all wet! What happened?? to
No, Jenny, it was very hot there.
In the evening, Vienna opened a restaurant, ate, drank, danced.
The exam he passed.
More precisely we.
I am proud of myself, for 25 years.
You are the first I told you.
by Michael Ashnin