A Montana Singularity

Professor Hugh Nibley said, "A singularity is a thing that does exist but should not exist."

Here in Montana we run across singularities all the time. They are part of the normal pattern of life, and while none of the locals bats an eyelid at them, to the transplanted they stand out like pikestaffs on your face. For example, in Troy there is but one dentist who practices from a surgery situated in a singlewide trailer home.

A friend of ours had a gruelling toothache but no money. She asked the good dentist's receptionist if he took payments in stages, but she told her that their policy was strictly cash on extraction. So, the poor girl had to suffer and live on high doses of painkillers that didn't work until she found a dentist in a nearby town who took pity on her and did the job on the never-never.

Time rolled around, as time is wont to do, and Gay got a dental abscess the size of Everest. Our good physician, John Wilcox, took one look, called the good dentist, and got an immediate appointment.

To save you from nightmares, I will discreetly draw a curtain over the next hour. If you want gore, go to your own dentist with an excrescence lying beneath a molar with ten-inch roots!

It came to pass that a much relieved Gay tottered out of the dentist's chair and took up a position in an arm chair in front of the mandatory fish tank while I stood at reception and tried to pay a bill of unknown proportions. My best efforts were futile. The receptionist apologised for not taking my money but explained that the girl who does the accounts isn't here just now. "We'll send you a bill," she cooed in that broad-smiled American way that is convincingly sincere.

We waited for the bill, but it took six months to arrive. They had added $2.00 for late payment, which we thought was cheap at the price. For a practice that didn't offer payment on terms, we thought it was peculiar, but put it down to a glitch.

Almost a year later, Gay broke a tooth and went back to the practice for another round with the dentist who works in shorts and could hold his own as the comedian at Sunday Night at the Palladium. At the conclusion of treatment, I went to the desk. This time the girl who did the accounts was there, but she simply smiled and said, "Oh, don't worry, we'll send you a bill."

Four months later the bill arrived with a supplement of $2.00 for late payment that we paid cheerfully, musing that it must be a standard practice of the practice. We figured that if they did offer treatment on terms, they would be paid long before they sent their bills out, although they would miss their late payment fees of $2.00 a time. Perhaps they really enjoyed the late fees. Who knows?

And the juxtaposition of not offering payment over time, but not sending out bills for several months presents us with something that should not happen, but does, and that's a singularity!