I was 19 and had progressed mechanically through grammar and high school and had gotten through my first year at New York University before I lost momentum and dropped out. I was living in an apartment, supporting myself by working weekends at a restaurant in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood. I figured I’d work full-time and save some money while I sorted out my life. Instead, in the Fall of 1973, I got laid off. 

Years later, as a newspaper reporter covering economics, I realized I’d been downsized in a recession, but all I knew at the time was that I couldn’t find a job. By January of 1974, I was unable to make the rent.  Friends were astonished when I talked about enlisting. The United States had only recently pulled out of Vietnam and military service was unpopular. But it was also the beginning of the All-Volunteer Force and Uncle Sam was offering good bennies for a four-year hitch. I fancied myself a Marine but my dad said I didn’t have that much discipline. My rent was a week overdue before I spent my last 35 cents on a subway token to the Navy recruiting office in Coney Island.

There, Petty Officer First Class Hall gave me an aptitude test, and when I aced it, handed me a glossy book listing every rating, or occupational specialty, the Navy offered. I liked the one that described the Navy Journalist. But Petty Officer Hall frowned when I shared my choice. That rating had a waiting list. What about becoming a yeoman like Radar, the character in the TV show M*A*S*H?

But I’d already learned that no matter what rating I chose, the Navy wasn’t going to take me away that very day to relieve my worry about the overdue rent. If I were to sign away the next four years of my life, I wanted to imagine that I was following in the footsteps of the Watergate reporters. So, Petty Officer Hall put my name on a waiting list and asked for a number to call should a training billet open up. I didn’t have a phone so I gave him mom’s number.

I had to hop the turnstile to catch the train home where, honest to God, I found a check for $1,500 in my mailbox. It was for the one and only student loan I ever took out. I used it to cover my January rent and pay for a ski trip with the girlfriend who would Dear John me in Boot Camp.

By February I had enough to keep my apartment for 30 more days but not enough for a gift or card for my mom’s 40th birthday, so I visited her instead. I was sitting opposite her at the kitchen table, eating the sandwich she had prepared when the phone on the wall next to her rang. She answered it, then handed me the receiver. It was Petty Officer Hall.

I uncoiled the long wire that attached the receiver to the wall and walked far enough away to listen in privacy as he told me that a training school billet had opened up, but to take that spot I would have to report to boot camp in early March. Do you want it, he said? You have to tell me now. I was silent for one, two, three heartbeats before I gave him the yes that changed my life. 

Fifty years later I can’t imagine my fate had I not embarked on that adventure. It would not be the last time I changed course on an impulse, and not everything worked out as well as my enlistment. So, the only life advice I would give is to visit your mother on her birthday, or at least call or write, because there will come a day when she’ll be gone and you’ll wish you still could.

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My epiphany began when the dentist displayed my X-rays on a wall-mounted TV. Using a stylus on a touchscreen laptop, the dentist circled and then drew arrows toward two back teeth. The marks appeared on the TV to highlight cracks atop the teeth. Both needed to be ground down to stubs, removing all cracks and decay before installing artificial crowns. Other teeth of lesser concern were also circled. But the arrows showed where biting down on a pit or bone could split either or both damaged molars, inviting calamity.

I marveled at teeth as a construct of God or nature. Properly care for, they can last practically forever

I did not doubt the circles and arrows. How much and how soon I asked apprehensively. There came a brief delay while the office staff crunched the numbers and then delivered the news: after insurance, I would have to pay $1,258 per tooth, and if I could remain in my chair past the one-hour checkup time, the dentist would fit me right in.

All hesitation vanished. I could charge the work and forestall the danger. Thus, I ended up spending most of the next several hours with my head back, mouth open, wincing at the sound of the drill, and trying not to gag as a water tube washed tooth bits away.

About two-thirds through the ordeal, I enjoyed a break during which the dentist saw two other patients. Meanwhile, the dental assistant made rubberized molds of the tooth stubs. The molds would be sent to a factory that would fill them with composite zirconium to make crowns to fit each tooth stub and be cemented into place later.

My appointment had begun before lunch. I left around closing time with temporary crowns and a lasting admiration for the office’s efficiency. As a former business and science writer, I’m fascinated with commerce. The dental practice was like a hair salon with several chairs. Keeping seats filled defrayed overhead and insured profit.

But I had more than business on my mind. While staring at the TV, considering my options, I marveled at teeth as a construct of God or nature. Properly care for, they can last practically forever as was driven home when I’d asked whether the tooth stub below the decay would support a crown. Yes, the dentist assured me. The root was strong as was the jaw. Crowning would build a safe chewing surface on a solid foundation.

It made scientific sense. Without brushing or flossing or dentistry beyond extraction, cave dwellers had left behind tooth and jaw fragments that archeologists and anthropologists theorized over when no skulls or skeletons could be found.

Other lessons can be drawn from the mouth, some tragic. Uninsured working people might have skipped the checkup or been unable to put the work on maxed-out credit cards. Street people with poor nutrition and self-destructive habits may lose teeth, roots, and bones. Even if they righted themselves, missing front teeth might advertise past misfortunes.

All this occurred to me as I considered how to pay that day’s charges, plus the costs implied by the other circles. Writing is a business too, and to make it profitable, a writer must keep putting ideas into words and pouring words into stories, each customized to fit the fancies of different audiences.

Meanwhile, I advise what any elder might. Care for your teeth. It will pay dividends throughout life. And long, long after they’re all that remains of you, archeologists and anthropologists will agree that they belonged to one of the wisest of our species.

Thanks for reading, and sharing this story. Please hit the comment button to reach me and leave a return email address if you would like a reply.

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I’ll arrive at the reunion on the red eye from San Francisco, after watching the youngest of my three children graduate high school. What a long, strange trip it’s been! Let me recap the last 50 years.

After Regis, I spent a year at NYU before dropping out and enlisting in the U.S. Navy. I ran a closed-circuit radio and television station aboard a ship that made port calls in the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong. My shipmates hailed from all over the country. Several remain dear friends.

After my enlistment ended, I put myself through UC Berkeley on the GI Bill. I majored in political science and minored in Mandarin. But I devoted most of my energy to working as a reporter and editor at the campus paper, the Daily Californian. In 1979, I enjoyed 15 minutes of fame for helping reveal the so-called secret for building a hydrogen bomb. Fortunately, then-President Jimmy Carter decided not to press charges for violating federal secrecy laws punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

It was at the Daily Cal that I met my future wife. We were married in a “Big Fat Greek Wedding” attended by two classmates who had migrated separately to the San Francisco Bay Area, and a third who flew out for the occasion.

My next stop was Eureka, a city on Northern California’s redwood coast – outside the fallout zone in the event of a nuclear war. I co-founded a mom-and-pop typesetting shop and community newspaper and got involved in personal computing. I lived on five acres, drew water from a spring, felled trees, split firewood, and cultivated a garden.

In 1990 I moved our growing family – our first son was born in 1989 – back to New York so I could attend the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. We lived in Brooklyn, rent-free, in the basement suite at Hotel Mom, Dad having sadly died of heart failure a couple of years earlier. After grad school I landed a job as science writer for the San Francisco Examiner.

On my first day, an earthquake tore open a section of the San Andreas fault in the Mojave Desert, causing no damage but allowing me to write my debut story for the front page.

Our second child was born in 1993, shortly after our arrival in San Francisco, and the third followed a decade later.

During my 18 years as a reporter and columnist in San Francisco, I would report on the emergence of the World Wide Web; interview Steve Jobs and other Silicon Valley luminaries; write about the decoding of the human genome; and cover the Great Recession. San Francisco being a popular destination for business junkets, classmates visited for professional events.

But my life blew up in 2011. Years of personal excess and poor judgment culminated in divorce, firing, a nervous breakdown, heart attack, and unemployment. I was 57, the age at which my father had died. I got a second chance. I restored my health with bypass surgery, exercise, and lifestyle changes. I rebuilt my career by writing interesting and illuminating stories about science and the Bay Area community. I worked on rebuilding my relationships with my three amazing and very different children. Today, I am Papou (grandfather) to three beautiful girls, ages seven, five, and three. I’m in a relationship with a woman I love. I am grateful but restless. Once my new graduate is settled at college I feel due for a new adventure.

Meanwhile I indulge in nostalgic recollections of our Regis years. I remember our times together and look forward to reuniting at 55 East 84^th Street.

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The Progressive said the law stifled debate over nuclear weapons without stopping enemies from figuring out how to design them.

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