SIM LAB

Tuesday night the kids and I crossed the Golden Gate bridge and ventured into the city to bring dinner to Mick at school. He had to work on preps (whatever that entails--I'm still figuring this all out so pardon the inexact language and terms). Both kids fell asleep in the car. Dane woke up when we got there, but Aubrey slept against my shoulder for the first 25 minutes of our pre-dining mini-tour.

Mick immediately took us to the sim lab. Picture a white room with a wall of huge windows plopped down in the middle of the tall buildings and blue sky of downtown San Francisco. Next, picture twelve rows of mini-cubicles (they only come up about waist high and seat about four to a station--three or four stations to a row?) the length and width of a basketball court. It seemed Mick and his 140 peers were all there in their blue scrubs bent over flimsy rubber "faces," poking and scraping and drilling (I know that's not the word I'm supposed to use) around a mouth full of fake teeth at 6 o'clock on a Tuesday night.

His fellow students were warm and friendly. Most of them had heard of us (kids, wife) and seemed really pleased to meet us. They admired the kids' blonde hair, Aubrey sleeping (drooling) on my shoulder, and Dane's complete fascination with the joint. It was pretty standard too for me to hear comments about Mick like "Is he this funny at home?" or "This guy keeps us cracking up" or "Mick helps keep things light around here."

While Aubrey slept and Mick and I talked with some of his new friends, Dane "worked" at Jordan West's station. Together they made a red play-doh man with "DAD" poked into his stomach with some dental tool. Jordan also showed Dane how to pull his arm inside his t-shirt and let his sleeve get sucked into a dental vacuum to make it look as if it had sucked his arm off. Dane thought that was hilarious. The kids love Jordan; maybe he should abandon any thoughts of endodontistry (the path his brother Jason and his dad took) and consider being a pediodontist instead! I know two kids who'd sit in his operatory any day of the week.

After our homemade-soup-in-a-thermos dinner, where we shared the dining hall with just one other dental student and his wife and their eight-month-old daughter, we headed back to the sim lab for a few more minutes. Dane and Aubrey leaned in close to look into Mick's practice mouth. I think they could've stayed there for an hour, fascinated by the tools, the teeth, the sounds (the vacuum of course), but we needed to leave Mick to practice.

On the way home, Dane was already planning to pack his Superman lunchbox with a PB&J sandwich for the next day so he could go to school with Mick; he also said he knew his favorite t-shirt that he was going to wear. He was sad when I told him he'd have to wait until a weekend, but Mick plans to bring Dane to the sim lab this Saturday for a couple of hours. Dane will definitely be prepared.