February 22; Putting Teeth Into Character Development
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

22 February

There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth.

Luke 13:28

Command Test

Root Canal, Helena
May, 2008

Our family has endowed a chair — not at the local university — but at our dentist’s office. You can use it if is not booked. We treat the chair like a fractional ownership of a Gulfstream G4.

Our five-child Penta-Posse has busted out more front teeth than an entire hockey team.

Your Business Professor is also minus a front tooth due to a basketball mishap. Non-stop dental work is also required to correct alterations caused by various bar-fights from decades past.

Dentistry, however modern, builds character…in parents.

I never really trust a man’s character and influence until he’s had a child in a dental chair. If a man can ‘command’ a child in a dentist’s chair he is ready for senior management.

The Diva is our middle daughter and her tooth trials began with a baseball bat. One of her brother’s team mates was out of the dug out.

“Don’t swing that bat in the stands…!”

When contact was made there was a mess: the crying, the wailing, the gnashing of (broken) teeth…

And that was just me. Not The Diva. She’s got a high tolerance for pain. She might have even have more testosterone than Your Business Professor.

A month later she got mouth-smacked with a field hockey stick.

So. After a few years of patchwork a tooth nerve has been removed, the canal filled, my wallet emptied.

And it still hurts. Me, not The Diva.

This is what passes for suffering in our soft times.

There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, Luke 13:28.

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