Oh, The Pain of it!

It's true, after all, that we are destined and
doomed to relive childhood in our elder years
but not necessarily in the puckish way that
is meant as a reversion to childish ways.
Consider the stark terror felt seventy years
ago as a child when you were informed a
visit to the school dentist had been scheduled
that panic-inducing, inescapable venture
on the part of a progressive school board
determined that children from unprivileged
backgrounds deserved dental treatment as
a human right, one those targeted children
would happily, joyfully have foregone had
they the wits to convince their parents. The
clumsy, uncaring hands of the Orde Street
Public School dentist in whose orbit other
schools fell resulted in fear, pain and blood
a pitiful sight that he may have for all we
know, enjoyed as a consummate sadist. Now
in our golden years a concerned medical
establishment deems it an absolute requirement
that shots for dread pneumonia, as well as
a vaccine meant for tetanus, diphtheria and
pertussis must be mandated for the elderly
health-vulnerable with the result that this
protocol invokes in them old memories and
a new dread; one shot in each upper arm
administered by the smiling, well meaning
yet inordinately clumsy nurse tasked to it
armed with the manual dexterity of an ox.