I hate needles. So much so that I remember getting a mild case of the shivers when I saw The Godfather Part III (1990; my comments) on the big screen with my friend Suseh back in ’91.
I had had jaw surgery several months before that film came out, and I was destined to have it again in a few months, and the scene depicted above — this, of all scenes! — made me cringe. Why? Because of that IV tube hanging from the back of Al Pacino’s hand. Yeah, you can’t really see where it connects with his skin, and it’s such a tiny part of the frame — but hoo boy, just being reminded of what it was like to wear one of those things, and so soon before I knew I had to wear one again, was enough to creep me out.
Why bring this up now? Oh, no reason, except I have a date with the dentist on Friday, and I watched an episode of House M.D. the other day in which there was a nice close-up of doctors cutting through a patient’s upper gums so that they can extract a tumour from behind the patient’s eyes. Egads. That’s not quite what the dentist has planned for me, but it’s still too close for comfort.
But then I remind myself about the jaw surgery, and I tell myself that my mouth and I have been through much, much worse.
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