Press the Fn Key!

I have tried.

But it doesn’t help me function.

The only thing that helps me function is coffee, wonderful, wonderful Brazilian coffee.

For example, yesterday I didn’t have enough coffee, so I couldn’t function. In fact so bad was my lack of function and coordination that I didn’t get here yesterday.

I went to the Murder House.

In the corner of my old primary school there was a small isolated building that we called the ‘Murder House’.

Every so often a kid would appear at the classroom door, whisper to the teacher, who would then call out a name. That kid was being summoned to the ‘Murder House’.

Murder weapon

Nervously, the summoned would pack is books into his/her school desk and lower the lid ever so slowly as if trying to prolong the safety of the classroom; then slowly, ever so slowly amble to the door, with a last glance back to friends and playmates, and disappear.

Sometimes they came back, but sometimes they didn’t, they’d been murdered by the school’s dental nurse using the fearsome treadle drill. The pervading smell of alcohol and the funny watery silver stuff that was amalgamated to pack ones teeth.

We knew why the ‘Murder House’ was isolated in the far corner of the school, that was so the other kids wouldn’t be traumatised by the screams, because the ‘Murder House’ didn’t respect playtime (recess) nor the lunch hour. We never actually saw a corpse leave the ‘Murder House’, but we did see distraught kids hustled quickly out the back gate with their mums.

You see, that is why my generation grew up with an innate fear of the dentist, a fear that for me exists today some nearly sixty years later.

I have a friend, Luciano, he’s a dentist, he’s my dentist. I like him, he’s great fun at a BBQ, but I hate what he does. Which is why I procrastinated from early December until yesterday in going to see him.

As it turned out, I did have two serious problems, he packed a curative in and told me not to chew my beer for an hour. Painless, one slight twinge, that sent me hurtling back in time (who needs a time machine?) and I was being hustled out of the chair for the next victim patient.

In my last post, I mentioned an eight year old Afghan girl being arrested as a suicide bomber.

She was shown on TV last night here in Brazil, she is in fact 10, a beautiful, articulate and seemingly intelligent girl.

What manner of people would treat a child like this? Apparently her older brother, a Taliban, recruited her. He is now being hunted by the police.

The world is an evil place.

Must blog along.

Later.