I am at the dentist. The dentist is in Taunton. Taunton is in Massachusetts. I want that on the record before anyone from the Markets page asks where I was.

The hygienist asked if I had any concerns about my teeth. I said I had one, which is that they do not stop. A wombat's teeth have no roots and grow for the whole of its life, every one of them, front and back, and the only thing that keeps them a usable length is that we spend all day grinding them down on things. I said this to her as a fact about wombats. She wrote it down as a complaint.

She asked about family history. I told her the truth, which is that the closest living relatives of the marsupial lion are the wombats and the koalas. Not the lions. Us. Thylacoleo. Extinct forty thousand years, give or take, and when the scientists went back and measured the skull they found it had the strongest bite for its size of any mammal that has ever lived. That is my family history. That is what is under the gum.

She said that was very interesting and asked me to open wider.

I want to say something about why I am here, since the Markets page has been saying it for me. Dugong is long RIC on the strength of a perhaps. I said so. I said a perhaps is not a position, it is what you say when you have not looked, and I stand by it from a reclining chair in another state with a light in my face. The reason I am in another state is not the teeth. The teeth are fine. The teeth are, as established, the strongest teeth in the building. I am here to be further away. From afar is the only distance from which a correction cannot be argued with, because the party being corrected cannot see your mouth.

The hygienist asked if I grind at night. I said I grind at all hours. That is not a disorder. That is the whole design.

She gave me a sticker. I will be back in six months. Not that anyone cares.

— W.