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Friday, October 5, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
MolarTron and Friends! An introduction by MolarTron
Greetings and
salutations!
I am MolarTron, a
Germ-Fighting Superhero from Planet Molar X!
The author who created
me, Susan F. Urell, has been a germ fighter since 1985 when she graduated
from dental hygiene school in Dayton, Ohio.
Actually, Suzi (as most people call her) began fighting
plaque and other crimes of the mouth when she was sixteen and worked in her
dad’s dental office! She
comes from a long line of dentists!
Her dad, her brother, two uncles, and two cousins are all dentists. Suzi didn’t want to be a dental
hygienist at first because she wanted to be a flight attendant and date foreign
men, but after getting rejected by the airlines for being overweight, she took
her dad’s advice.
“Go be a dental
hygienist and then you can go see the world!” her dad told her, and that is precisely what she did! Suzi is a very practical person and
figured she would always have a job as a dental hygienist, which could fund all
of her adventures! The day after
college graduation she packed her dog in the car and drove to San Francisco,
sight unseen!
Fourteen years into her
practice, she thought she had seen it all. She had the screamers in the chair,
the PIA's (pains in "rear") kids who were very badly behaved, and the
squirmers! For those kids, if the parent stayed out of the operatory and
waited out in the waiting room, the kids usually did better and turned
themselves around fairly quickly.
Suzi had this one little girl that screamed for two straight years,
every six months, until finally the girl matured enough to let Suzi do a
cleaning! Finally! Success!
Shortly thereafter, on
this one particular afternoon, in a grocery store aisle, Suzi heard a stranger
who was about to change her life.
As she walked by this
woman and her crying youngster, she overheard the woman sternly
say to this child, with the index finger pointed in the child's
face, “If you don’t stop it, I’m taking you to
the DENTIST!”
Those words brought
Suzi’s cereal shopping to a screeching halt.
Dentistry as
punishment?!
Suzi had seen varying
degrees of fear before in the office, but she had never witnessed
the tragic beating down of a four year old innocent
dental spirit like she did that day in aisle 7, which in turn deeply
touched her own spirit. In short, she had a quick conversation with
this mother where Suzi suggested that she consider threatening her child with a
“time-out” instead of threatening her with her dental health for perhaps the
rest of the child's life!
Let's face it! No
one equates "fun and entertaining" with DENTISTRY!!!!
(Not yet, anyway!) But punishment? That was way more than Suzi
could accept. She could only imagine that one day, when confronted by a
looming dental appointment, that little girl may NEVER willingly step foot in a
dental office! She may never even know why she gets so upset about dental
visits once she grows up. Suzi’s heart truly went out to that little girl
and others like her. She went home
and could not sleep.
By midnight Suzi had
decided her new mission in dentistry would be to demystify
the formal dental experience for children like that girl (and
their nervous, frightened grown-ups!) via fun, goofy, musical, happy,
informative entertainment! Entertainment was the only way
Suzi could imagine having a shot at redirecting negative beliefs
and perceptions. Laughter really is the best medicine,
right?!
So that
night Suzi created me, MolarTron, and my world on Planet Molar X. Actually, I was called Toofus back
then! She created all my friends,
like Flossie Floss’riguez (Flossie’s a floss fairy and she’s my best friend. I’m crushing on Flossie SO BADLY! But sssshhh!!! It’s a secret!).
That night when I was born, Suzi wrote
me into a goofy book about getting a cavity and the procedure
to fix it. She kept
writing. She wrote another book about how to brush if
you're a toddler. Then she wrote a sing-a-long about how to floss!
She wrote about the Sleep Fairy who puts lips and tongues and teeth
to sleep. She wrote about what it's like to get your teeth cleaned. She
wrote about the pet hamster whose teeth grow too long and he can't eat. She
wrote about odd patterns of permanent tooth eruptions. She wrote about the office
noises, smells, tastes, and sensations.
Suzi went out into the
schools and found ideas, inspiration, and encouragememtn from the students and
from her young patients to keep pushing ahead with “MolarTron &
friends!” Suzi discovered that she
loved acting and “edu-taining.”
Suzi moved to Florida to
help her mom start a new dental employment business, and while she was there she became a
professional plus-size model and TV commercial actress after hearing a casting
call on the radio! This is Suzi in an ad for Sears turtlenecks and jeans!
She had a good
seven-year run and was able to join the Screen Actors Guild!
After her mom got
settled in the dental employment business, Suzi moved to Los Angeles to see if she could be an
actress in Hollywood! Her timing
was terrible! She moved right
before the September 11 attacks, and most of Hollywood shut down. At the same
time, Suzi had met a literary agent who shopped our first book, DEE KAY
STRIKES AGAIN!, around to nineteen publishers. Most of them sent back very nice rejection letters. No one was doing anything then. I was put on the back burner for a
while.
In 2009, Suzi was
happily working as a dental hygienist in Burbank, California. Life was
good, the patients were cool people who worked in the movie and TV business at
the studios nearby, some of the patients had a lot of star power, and her income
was strong and steady. That's when she went to hear Anthony Robbins
speak, and ended up walking across a bunch of hot burning coals. Now I was sleeping on the shelf on my
homeworld, Planet Molar X, so I didn’t actually see her walk across a bed of
hot burning coals. However, I did
see the pictures online on Tony’s website and thought it was pretty cool of her
to do that.
Well, after becoming an
official "firewalker,” Suzi decided to pull me and our children’s dental
health edutainment books, called The Adventures of Toofus! off the shelf
and actually do something with them! Suzi hired a “team” of kids and
professionals to read and critique each book to be sure the kids would like
me. She paid the kids $5.00 each
to fill out a questionnaire, and she took all their comments very
seriously. Five year old Niki
designed the costume for Flossie Floss’riguez.
Eight year old Izaak suggested a rainbow toothbrush, so Suzi
put Rainbow Bristle Beast in the brushing book. Suzi always says that “MolarTron is for the kids, by the
kids!”
Suzi figured if she
could walk across hot burning coals (and train her brain to protect her body
from getting burned), well then, she could do anything she set her mind to
doing. In 2009 she wanted to be a
writer.
Low and behold, in the
time that she wrote and copyrighted our early Toofus stories until the time she
decided to make a go of being a bonafide writer, someone had actually acquired
a trademark on the name TOOFUS! We were like, "WHAT THE HECK?"
It felt as if someone had pulled the rug out from under us, because
way back in 1999 when Suzi first created me and bought the Toofus domain name,
there was barely a peep of my name, Toofus, anywhere on the internet. Ten
years later, the name is everywhere out there!
Ahhh well...after grieving
the loss of not being able to use my actual name in commerce, we had a sit
down. We cried. We laughed. We ate Chinese food (I just love Earthling egg rolls!). We
brainstormed. We cried some more.
We brainstormed some more. I tried out different names, such as Enamel
Man, Toothus, Enamelus, and Molar Man (already taken!). After a few days of sleeping on it, we
ran a name search in the trademark office, and finally decided that my new name
would be MolarTron!
MolarTron!
It sounded like a video
game you’d play in a dental office waiting room! >Molar… TRON!<
I was totally feelin’
it. MolarTRONNNNN!!! Watch out, Plaque Bacterians! Here comes MolarTron! Dee Kay, your days are numbered!! I’m MOLARTRON!
Yeah! MolarTron
sounded contemporary and modern and neon lights and new millennium-ish and way
cooler than my more juvenile name, Toofus! I became MolarTron and I liked it!
So, E.L. Benson, my
illustrator, revved up my steel arm and made one of them morph into a dental
drill! Then he made my other
steel arm morph into a dental mirror! I was ready for action!
Suzi contacted her old agent but never heard a peep back, so we promptly
self-published our first MolarTron book called MolarTron & Friends! Fighters of Plaque and Other Crimes of
the Mouth! Starring L’il Mo! We secured a trademark on my name. Life was good. Suzi had that groovy dental hygiene job
near the studios and was making a decent-enough living that she could afford me
as a new business. We made a web
page. We started a publishing
company so we could produce a series of MolarTron books and DVDs! We planned to promote good oral hygiene
and dental health education in an entertaining and memorable way, and on a
global scale! Flossie Floss’riguez
and Bristle Beast were so excited, too!
Things were going
great! We were on a quest to
empower kids with knowledge!
On the personal side,
Suzi was working out
with a personal trainer three times a week and felt good. She lived in a nice place in Studio
City. She wasn’t even grinding her
teeth so much at night anymore.
Stress was low! And we were
having a blast with our friends in Los Angeles! We loved helping the Kid’s Community Dental Clinic in
Burbank with their events. What a
great bunch of people who help children, and they do it with so much love. With the help of the Clinic we got to
hang out with the Burbank Fire Department on Fire Service Day!
Then, BAM! a recession
hit. As the economy took a
dive, Suzi was involved in a freak accident with her car trunk. She lifted up the trunk but then BAM! the hydraulics failed and the heavy trunk slammed
down on her arm and crushed her radial nerve (This was on top of the previous two car accidents where she
was rear-ended in 1999 and T-boned in 2006!).
Whiplash and freaky car
accidents are not good for a dental hygienist with 24 years of experience under
her belt!
Needless to say, Suzi was
on disability for over a year while her radial nerve healed, and she had to
give up her groovy job in Burbank because she was going to be gone from work
for a long time. Several different
doctors suggested it was time to consider working in another profession that didn’t
tax her shoulders and neck.
Meanwhile, in between
bi-weekly painful physical therapy sessions and sitting at home not feeling
well, Suzi and I passed the time by trying new recipes and eating entirely
waaaaay too many baked goods!
But anyway, after the arm
injury, Suzi had to drop her personal trainer and stop working out for a while,
because it was too painful to exercise (and since she wasn’t working anymore it
became too expensive anyway).
Well, talk about trying new recipes! Not working, not working out, over-eating, and feeling a lil
sorry for herself was a recipe for depression and disaster! In two years Suzi gained 60 pounds on her already
chunkified frame.
But she was still writing
stories for me, still proceeding forward with all the legal necessities to
protect me and our designs and our songs, and we were still clicking right
along. I don’t know how she did
it. She was unstoppable.
So, six months after
the trunk accident, Suzi took me and our cat, BB, to her hometown of
Columbus, Ohio to live with her mom! Suzi
began seeing a family doctor for her injuries. She still wasn’t working out or excercising much at
all. And she wasn’t writing books
about me and my Planet Molar X friends, either. She wasn’t doing much of anything constructive for us but at
least for herself she went to therapy.
So I cheered her on!
Flossie Floss’riguez gave her some pink lip gloss. And Bristle Beast let her win at checkers.
It got pretty bad there
for a while. Suzi sold
just about everything valuable that she had. “It’s only stuff,” she told me, “but I still have YOU,
MolarTron! And you give me a
reason to get up every morning. YOU give me a sense of purpose in life,
MolarTron.” she has always told me.
Awwwww. Her devotion to helping children made
me feel so good! I didn’t mind
hanging out on the shelf after that! I knew
she would make some money somehow, and we would be able to continue our fight
against sugar, Dee Kay, and other health problems!
So, we stayed with Suzi’s
mom in Columbus. Suzi worked in a dental laboratory answering the phones. She told me I’m her passion! She bought toothbrushes for kids and we went out to schools and fairs and festivals and met the people. She told me maybe she is channeling this information from a higher
place. She said she can’t
stop! She is compelled to keep
going and contribute to the greater good.
Suzi is determined to help children get and stay healthy! Flossie and I feel badly that her love
for us (and her belief in us) has practically bankrupted her, but she tells us
that one day, we will for sure make a difference!
....Months later....
....Months later....
Hey! We’re finally off of food assistance
and we have our own apartment again! Hooray! Suzi has finally healed enough to go back to work parttime as a dental
hygienist. She's also losing weight and blogging about it here:
www.susanurell.blogspot.com
She wants to lose that 60 pounds she gained plus the extra 40 that was there before all the crazy stuff started happening! She said, "How can I lead the kids to better health when mine is so out of control?" Then someone talked to her about "leading by example." The problem is that Suzi, like many humans, is addicted to sugar.
I tell ya, it's not easy to resist all the SUGAR stockpiles that exist all over Earth. I never saw so much sugar in my entire life on Planet Molar X as I see here on Earth. It's EVERYWHERE and practically in everything humans eat. That's one reason I am here. I want to help kids learn all about the hazards of sugar, beginning at an early age! It can hurt teeth AND hurt human bodies and people have actually died from an infected cavity brought on by Dee Kay himself!
I tell ya, it's not easy to resist all the SUGAR stockpiles that exist all over Earth. I never saw so much sugar in my entire life on Planet Molar X as I see here on Earth. It's EVERYWHERE and practically in everything humans eat. That's one reason I am here. I want to help kids learn all about the hazards of sugar, beginning at an early age! It can hurt teeth AND hurt human bodies and people have actually died from an infected cavity brought on by Dee Kay himself!
I was born for this! Yiiipppeee kiiii yayyy!!!
You better watch out, Dee Kay! Toofus is all grown up and now MolarTron is coming for you!
You better watch out, Dee Kay! Toofus is all grown up and now MolarTron is coming for you!
Love,
MolarTron
xoxoxoxoxoxox
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