Cameron did great. Nobody cleaned his teeth or anything; he just got his mouth looked at by the dentist.

WE LOVE THE DENTIST. Long hair, a goatee, a brightly-colored bandanna on his head -- could this really be a dentist? Cameron is usually shy around strange men, but he didn't even think of hiding his face with this guy. He even opened his mouth when "Dr. Doug" asked him to say Ah, and let him poke his mirror around.

Dr. Doug was great with C., but he was even better with us. He immediately sensed our leanings; he said, "You're not from Fresno originally, are you?" We said no, Bay Area/Oregon. And he says, with a twinkle in his eye, something like, "Oh, yeah, Bay Area, Oregon, just like Fresno, huh, you must have really felt at home here with all the environmentalists and the gay activists and the poets?"

I laughed and said, "It's been an adjustment. There are quality people here; you just have to look for them." And then we talked for a bit about sources of such people: Community Alliance, which he knew about, Quaker Meeting, which he didn't, and the UU church, which he goes to!

"What about you?" I said. "How'd you wind up in Fresno?"

"I was born and raised here, went into the family practice," he said, waving his arm about. My whole family is just like the rest of Fresno... Conservative," he went on, wrinkling up his nose, "Republican, and you can forget about 'religious freedom'! Certain topics you just cannot bring up or they just go nuts..." I thought this was really brazen of him to say in his own father's dental office!

Seeing this in print makes it look like he sounded really bitter; he didn't. The conversation didn't seem forced or weird at all, just really engaging and friendly and fun.

"What about your folks?" he segued. "Bay Area, they must have been all right, huh?"

I said, "Well, they're not 'granola' by any means, but they're left of center, so I was brought up more or less with the correct sensibilities!"

He gave C. a child-size toothbrush. "Made of recycled yogurt containers!" he said. Ha!

We got out of there and T. and I agreed that he was da bomb, and that we ourselves might just start coming to him.