I spent some time yesterday at my favorite haunt, the dentist's office. Usually, I like to drop in and see if there are any new high-powered drills or cherry-flavored anesthetics, but the purpose of yesterday's visit was all business. Now, in exchange for a couple of hours of my time, I have a disturbing numbness on the left side of my face and, on that same side, what's left of a molar. Mmmm. Stumpy.

Apparently, I've been grinding my teeth in the night, and forced the filling on that molar up into the nerve. I feel very proud. Next on the agenda: turning coal into diamonds, using my teeth.

Staying home yesterday, doped up on Vicodin, allowed me the opportunity to watch a terrific film entitled Hell's Highway, all about the history of traffic safety films. It was every bit as lurid as you'd imagine, but with lots of talking in between scenes, to cut through the gore.

Watching it, I was reminded of a horrific bus safety film that ruined my childhood sleep for many years. It was shown to my grade school class following an incident wherein we were so unruly on the bus that the driver was unable to hear the siren of the police car attempting to pull her over (due to our visible unruliness).

Shortly after the unruliness, we students were ushered into the combination cafeteria and auditorium ("cafetorium") to watch the film, in which dangerous 1970s teenagers in bell-bottoms misbehave on the bus and come to a collective bloody end.

All I remember about the film, aside from a general bloodbath, was that one girl ("Kathy," I believe) had brought a giant paper flower onto the bus, and that someone else had brought a mouse, which escaped and of course, led to imminent doom for everyone involved. "If only Kathy hadn't brought the giant paper flower on the bus..." goes the voiceover in my imagination. Clearly, I need to see this film again and exorcise the Demons of Bus Safety that have plagued me since my grade-school days.

Googling "bus safety film" brought up the title And then it happened, the description of which seems to jibe with my memory of the film. Have you seen this film? I'm going to rent a copy and revisit its 1972 glory--the saturated colors, the dangerous teenagers, the giant flower made of, I believe, crepe paper glued to a wooden stick--all the classic elements of horror.

And then, I'm going to look up the name of the teacher who showed us that film, call her in the middle of the night and whisper, "You ruined my liiiiiiiife..."

Star of the day. . .Phyllis Vaughn