Gravity hurts

You know the expression "When Hell freezes over"?

I'm not sure that's a good description, because I'm starting to think that Hell is covered in a permanent sheet of ice.

On Thursday morning, I knew there was freezing rain going on. I get texts from KSL that alert me to news things, and I got lots of texts about accidents and stuff. And then I heard my roommate Scott yelling as he almost slipped outside on the little staircase balcony.

I left to go to school and I could see for myself just how icy it was. At first I thought, "This is crazy!" I watched the girl in front of me nearly fall from slipping. I watched a bunch of people walk on the snow piles on either side of the sidewalk to keep from falling. So I decided to do the same. But one of the snow piles I decided to walk on was compacted and covered with ice. I tried to catch myself on the nearby truck, but I didn't. BOOM! I nearly broke my coccyx.

At this point, the ice wasn't just crazy. It was annoying. And scary.

So then I continued my trek to campus, occasionally slipping but able to keep my balance.

Then I got to the sidewalk on the hill going up to campus. I saw that very few people were on it; most people were walking on the snow-covered field. I tried to walk over to that same field, but as I started on the sidewalk, I just slipped away. I could tell that it wasn't going to work to get on the field there, so I thought I could walk on the snow on the curb until I got somewhere flatter and then cut across to the sidewalk.

Eventually I got someplace that seemed a little flatter and I would safely be able to get to the snow on the other side of the sidewalk.

But I was wrong when I thought "safely." I slipped. And the next thing I knew, I was lying on the ground, my glasses above my head, my right front tooth caved in, and my shoulder hurting.

I was kind of in distress at this point. I have always been afraid of breaking my teeth, and here I was, broken teeth, lying on the cold, hard, wet ground, not knowing if I could move. I worried my arm was broken.

Then a guy came and asked if I was all right. I didn't know how I was. He helped me take my backpack off. I was worried about it, because I thought my arm was injured. But it didn't take me long to figure out my arm was going to be fine, although it was sore. Then he helped me slide over to the snow. There were lots of people around me; the guy who helped told them it was too dangerous to be there. One girl gave me back my glasses. The guy was moving my gloved hand to my face. I didn't know why. It turned out I was bleeding. My water bottle fell off my backpack and rolled way down the icy sidewalk (I later got it back from a girl who picked it up).

A man who was employed at the booth near the gates that go up and down (I don't know what they're called) came out and asked me if I wanted the campus paramedics to come. Everyone seemed so worried about me that I accepted. He called them, but they were pretty busy. I went into the parking booth while we waited for them. They arrived and checked me out and gave me an "adhesive bandage" (it probably wasn't a Band-aid) for the cut on my chin. During all this time, I was most concerned about my tooth, but everyone else didn't seem to care about that. I think they were most worried that I was bleeding. It was just a small cut, but I did bleed quite a bit for the size. The EMTs said there was nothing they could do (maybe if they were less busy they would have) and they sent me on my way. I didn't want to go to class with broken teeth.

Now, it just so happens that there is a dentist's office right by my apartment; in fact, I home teach some guys who live above it. I didn't want to go up to the BYU Health Center--I didn't want to go anywhere--but since Cougar Dental was on my way home anyway, and I was most concerned about my teeth, I stopped in. There are a lot of small businesses by my house, and I've been to most of them. But I never planned on going to Cougar Dental.

While I was filling out the necessary paperwork, I kept feeling little hard pieces floating around in my mouth. It was a little disheartening to pull them out and realize they were pieces of my teeth. Broken bones heal, but teeth keep their chips.

The dentist's assistant took x-rays of my teeth, and then the dentist numbed me up so that he could pull my tooth back into place. I am so thankful for the miracle of modern medicine, that my tooth was restored to its proper position just an hour after it was displaced. But I do have several chips. One of them (on my left front tooth) will have to be filled, while the others can just be smoothed out. But when my tooth got pushed back, it's possible it severed a nerve or a blood vessel, and I may need a root canal. My mom talked to my regular dentist, and he said there's an 80 percent chance I will need one. I'm holding out for the 20 percent.

The ice started melting, but I was terrified of it freezing again later in the day, so I stayed home. I emailed my afternoon professor--she was very understanding--and I did job stuff from home. It turns out I could have gone, but I didn't want to risk it.

I actually had an interesting work experience this week. I have to write abstracts for articles written by Hugh Nibley. Nibley was a very smart guy, and he is a good writer on the sentence level, but on the organization level, he's terrible. It's very hard to write these abstracts, because I don't understand the significance of all the things he's saying. Anyway, in one of these articles, he was praising the work of a certain scholar and saying that "the Latter-day Saints owe a debt of gratitude" to this guy. Well, I wrote the abstract, but I wasn't quite satisfied. So I decided to research this guy, and I found out that the Latter-day Saints should not be grateful to him; he went around preaching anti-Mormon sermons. But even more seriously, he was a total fraud! He got his PhD from a company that would send you one in the mail if you sent them money--a company that was shut down by Washington state for being unethical. In one of his books he has an introduction by a certain man, praising him for his great knowledge and saying that he was friends with presidents and kings. But the man never existed! One of my bosses was quite glad I discovered all this, and instead they had me write an abstract pointing out the problem.

On Friday morning, I looked out the window and saw people slipping again. I decided it wasn't worth going to school. After all, when I tried to go on Thursday, I ended up missing it anyway and ended up in the dentist. I hate missing school; the only other time I've missed college classes was for my field trip back in November. But I didn't dare risk slipping again.

My teeth have gotten better, but they still hurt, and I have to be careful. I can't bite things; I have to put all my food in the back of my mouth.

I don't wanna lose my tooth tonight. It's the only thing that matters.