You never know what kind of trouble will grow from the smallest things. For instance, lately I have been having teeth trouble -- trouble with roots far in the past.
Many years ago a dentist put in a filling that overlapped another instead of taking that first filling out. That situation led to a root canal -- both the fillings failed and I had to have my tooth cut down and drilled out and a fake top put on it. That lasted for six or so years, and then the root canal failed and led to an abscessed tooth.
The excruciating pain led me back to a dentist and then an oral surgeon. There was not a good chance of being able to do another root canal, so I had the tooth taken out. I won't regale you with that experience, suffice it to say when someone uses "like pulling teeth" to describe a difficult and unpleasant job, they are being wholly accurate. The extraction led to a sliver of jaw bone getting loose in my gum and working its way out over the next six weeks, like a very determined splinter making its way to the surface.
Now I am looking forward to the potential of a yearlong round of expensive surgeries that my insurance won't cover to put a new tooth in the old one's place. Or they could cut down the surrounding healthy teeth to create a bridge. Or we can leave it alone and let the surrounding teeth shift and jostle in the new space they have available.
There's another issue I've been dealing with, too, that's less painful but does have roots in the past, and in my flower beds -- a plant known as goutweed. I am sure the original planter had no more idea than my original dentist did of what a pernicious problem it would turn into. Formally known as Aegopodium podagraria, it is sold as a harmless-looking ground cover with cream and green variegated leaves. Once established, it forms such dense patches that it forces out all other plants. It's great for erosion control and in areas in which you can firmly control it, but it's not so good in flower beds. It spreads underground by root growth. If you dig into the ground, you will find a mass of rhizomes filling the dirt down about 6 inches. You can dig the stuff up, but if you leave any roots behind, they will soon pop up new leaves. You even have to be careful of where you dispose of it, as the bare roots will do their best to find a new home. We've mostly conquered it in one flower bed, by digging up every bit of it and sifting out the roots by hand. Once it was cleared out, we found an old rose, a peony and a hydrangea. We still have to weed every so often, as the inevitable scraps left behind keep showing up. If we stopped weeding for a season, it would again inexorably spread to cover all the other plants in the bed.
My dental and gardening issues led me to think about Virginia Tech athletic director Jim Weaver. He's been working on some weeding of his own garden this season, or said another way, trying to excise what some see as an abscess. I wonder if the Virginia Tech drummer that, perhaps innocently, perhaps apocryphally, started the now banned "stick it in" cheer might feel the same way in retrospect as the gardener who brought home that nice-looking goutweed? It's thought-provoking to see that some sports fans finally have found a cause they can get behind -- the fight for the right to air-hump at football games. The atmosphere at football games has devolved to the point that some fans sincerely believe that the whole point is to create a hostile atmosphere for the opposing team (and anyone else who isn't charmed by drunken pelvic thrusts). Now football fans don't even balk at booing, whether it is the other team or their own quarterback. The ideals of community spirit and good sportsmanship have been eroded.
Another columnist, Amy Splitt, recently pointed out harassment by football fans, and I can think of plenty of other instances I've witnessed of fans destroying property, threatening violence, shouting obscenities and other antisocial activities. Of course, most fans are not like that. My mom is a big Hokies fan, and she tells me the section of the stadium she sits in isn't a hotbed of drunkards or air humpers. But it doesn't take many to make for an unpleasant experience inside or outside the stadium. Mr. Weaver, I think, is learning a lesson I learned back when I was substitute teaching in Montgomery County schools -- it's hard to regain control and a sense of propriety once it's lost. It can't be uprooted with a pair of pliers like my poor old tooth. Like reclaiming a garden, it requires persistence. And perhaps a shovel.
Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.