The First Deadly Sin

Really since the beginning of the pandemic I haven't getting out much and meeting and seeing new people, something I used to do in the early phases of my practice and, though it's very hard to draw a straight line between all this "networking" and my practice, certainly I met a lot of people and learned an awful lot about a lot of things, including the strengths of the local universities, economic development, and entrepreneurship. All in all it's been a positive thing.

So when Nathan mentioned that he was going to some thing at Duke about technology transfer (from academia to private sector), I saw no good reason not to go. With the exception of other work I could be doing. In the end, I went.

Being a little rusty and off the circuit, I didn't know that many people and my ability to bullshit about science, which I had honed a little during my years when our office was at the NC Biotech Center, had declined precipitously. Also, I just didn't care much. So, after chatting for a while with my former neighbor Mary Beth (lovely to see her) and catching up on one another's kids, I made my way over to the food table. It's not that I was that hungry, mind you, it's just that the pull of free food honed over many years in a doctoral program in the humanities exerted and irresistible pull on me.

I had seen people wandering around the floor with these little slider-looking thingies and when I approached the table I saw that they contained brisket, so I put a couple of those on a plate and some funky fall-themed ravioli. I was making my way around the table to where the salads were (I promise I was) and I decided to take an investigatory bite of one of the sliders to assess its merits. But when I bit down, there was sharp and piercing pain in one of my front incisors.

Upon closer inspection, there was a sturdy plastic toothpick (verily, the work of Lucifer himself) which my jaws, which are after all some of the body's strongest muscles ounce for ounce, had driven into the area around my lower incisors, already a tad precarious. Just then I saw Mary Beth's husband Dennis standing there and had to go say hello, though my teeth were writhing in pain and it kind of felt like I had dislodged one. He and I caught up while in my mind I'm standing there going what the fuck is up with my mouth. I made my way to the bathroom as quickly as I could. There was nothing visibly amiss but man, was there pain. And my bite was different.

After a dinner of cheese grits and the very last of the Thanksgiving stuffing this morning my mouth is decidedly less bad but not altogether good. I will stick with soft food for the day. Clearly the Lord hat smited me for my gluttony, and I do sincerely repent. It makes me want to revisit Wittgenstein's reflections on the topic of toothache which I think made it all the way into the Philosophical Investigations though they may have been relegated to the notebooks which became Culture and Value or perhaps the lectures distilled into the Blue and Brown books. It should also, obviously, temper the rapacity with which I attack buffet spreads in the future.