The Pizza Cutter

When our youngest Tommy was just about two his pediatrician said he wasn’t saying words because his tongue was tied, so Dr. Leo referred us to a specialist who had fancy degrees on his wall. Tommy laid back in the dentist type chair and the doctor, an ENT by training, took out what I swear was a pizza cutter, plugged it into the wall, took an uncomfortably long deep breath and with Tommy screaming bloody murder and my right hand holding down Tom’s shoulder, the doctor went in. He cut the “tie” and some blood emerged and after maybe 6-7 seconds he pulled the cutter back, turned to me and said “What do you think?” 

What do I think!?  I couldn’t believe that the ENT trained doctor with the fancy degrees was asking for MY medical opinion. I get it, he wasn’t asking me to diagnose cancer, but still.  I breathed, shrugged a bit and said “Well doc, I think we can keep going, let’s get a bit more of it.”  I couldn’t believe I said it and if you could have only seen my bride’s face in that moment.  On the one hand I was a tad bit alarmed that the trained surgeon was asking for my advice, but on the other all these years later I suppose I realize that doctors are human. So doc nodded, re-engaged that pizza cutter and went back in, cutting “a bit more” of that tie and, well, within a few days Tommy was speaking. And now some 13 years later knows all sorts of words, some of the bad ones that George Carlin told us we can’t say on television, and some good ones too, like precipitous and incandescent and ephemeral, which to be honest I had to look up. It apparently means things that don’t last forever, like conversations or arguments or those moments when your kids are little and you have no idea what you’re doing and sometimes just wish they would grow up.