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Six-Pack Abs, Tight Butts, &
Perspective by Dr. John F. Miller DDS
Five years ago my wife and I, along with our two kids at the time, loaded up our U-Haul and headed north over the Golden Gate Bridge to our destination in the Flathead Valley.
While we were sad to leave our very unique
San Francisco experience, we were heading to what we knew was to be our final destination in life. We felt a deep feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment as we were simultaneously realizing two of our major goals as a family: 1) Successfully completing eight years of higher education and obtaining my Doctorate of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree. 2) Making the Flathead Valley the place our children will know as Home. As we settled and met new neighbors, patients, and friends, a common question was asked of me: “So how do you like this small-town living out in the country?” My reply has always been, “If you could visit the place where I was raised, you would realize that this does not feel like a ‘small town’ to me.” If you are a long-time reader you would know that I grew up in Northeast Arizona in the high desert region of the Colorado Plateau in a town of approximately 1,000 people. My hometown is credited as inspiring the popular Disney movie “Cars.” In any case I would describe my childhood as “Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn meet the Desert.” I was entrusted with a lot of freedom. I recall many times that my mom would pack my lunch and send me off with a cousin of a similar age to go explore the desert. We had a lot of free time to explore because we were not yet of school age. That’s right, we were 5 years old hunting for snakes and lizards in the desert, fueled by PB&J. With only my little legs for travel my adventure radius was quite small. But as all little boys do. I became bigger and stronger. I became braver if not more daring. I had more efficient means of travel. Legs turned into Pedals, Pedals turned into 4-wheelers, which in turn became a seemingly indestructible blue and white 1977 Chevrolet Scottsdale Pick-up truck. The same levels of freedom carried over from my youth and I explored my little piece of Arizona desert thoroughly. During the hot summer months my friend’s favorite activity and mine was cliff diving at one of the many water-filled canyons that littered the landscape. A powerful combination of observant females and a lack of common sense had us doing some crazy
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Everyone around has some level of perspective pertaining to different topics. These same people also have some level of ignorance as well. In other words, we all have some combination of “We Know, We Know We Don’t Know, and
We Don’t Know We Don’t Know.”