Extra Time And Your

Her name is exactly what you think it is when you look at her but we're calling her Doris. She's the hygienist at my dentist's office and I have seen her exactly twice. The first time, two weeks before my braces came off, was the week her husband left her and the children. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but the last thing you want is someone having a crying jag while sticking sharp objects into your gums. I love my dentist but it was two years before I worked up the nerve to make an appointment for another teeth cleaning.

Mercy, mercy, Doris' life is moving on even as time stops while I'm sitting in her chair. She remembers me. She asks how I've been. I can't tell the nice lady with the sad blue eyes that the memory of our last encounter haunts me and causes me to brush longer, so I tell her two years ago my life turned upside down, but things are better, and here I am. She tells me her brother drank himself to death and her estranged sister-in-law won't release the ashes. On a case by case basis I can be a compassionate person, but Doris' case has lost its handles. Thank Vishnu I've been using an electric toothbrush.

Speaking of not handling things well, there may be a better way to handle this.

Stop smooching.

That's the message of a new sign that went up outside a train station in northern England on Monday.

The goal is to stop departing passengers from pulling up in their cars at a crowded drop-off point and pausing to kiss each other farewell.

Virgin Rail says it installed the sign while refurbishing the station after a local business networking group said the place had to become more efficient.

But profit margins may have been a factor, too.

Virgin Rail says that if passengers want to share an embrace before they part company, they should pay to park their cars nearby where they can kiss all they want.

I can't wait until a local government ANYWHERE ON EARTH puts up a sign that says PARK HERE AND KISS. If this happened in America, those delicate flowers home-schooled on abstinence-only sex ed would take that as an order. What else could go predictably wrong?

Well, for starters, Doris wants me to floss.