Has this ever happened to you?
I hate going to the dentist
When I was younger, before a trip to the dentist, I would furiously try to brush away months of accumulating and neglected plaque from my teeth. But now that I have realized that my efforts were futile, I have limited myself to a simple brushing�I didn�t even floss.
So I found myself back in the dentist chair again, except this time, the dental assistance lowered the chair so much that I was practically lying there. I realized that it was a pretty vulnerable position, and considering she had all that industrious teeth cleaning equipment right beside her, I was pretty nervous.
�Are you a junior or a senior?� she asks.
As always, I find it difficult to reply and keep my mouth open �ahh� at the same time. But I manage to get the idea across that I am a junior.
�You have one more year, then.� she says.
One more year of what? I think to myself. High school? Or life? Because life doesn�t end after high school�it begins!
She then spreads �Red Cote� on my teeth, that sweet magenta liquid that sticks to your plaque with cruel loyalty. When she tells me to rinse out, I do so intensely, trying to remove as much of the liquid by my own means as possible. Still, when she tells me to look in a hand-held mirror, my gums are lined in red, which she makes haste to point out. She also uses one of those small circular mirrors that fit inside the mouth to show me the backs of my teeth, a world I rarely see. She proceeds in instructing me on brushing my teeth correctly, except she uses none of the methods I had previously been taught: eight strokes in circular motion on every tooth, and eight up and down motions on the tops of the teeth.
�If humans can be allergic to latex, then fish probably can be, too,� she says suddenly.
�But the fish-man said so,� says her fellow dental assistant friend, upon when I realize that she was not speaking to me.
�Screw the fish-man.�
I don�t pay close attention to the conversation, though, because meanwhile she is scraping my teeth with a small, sharp hook, and is occasionally hitting my gums, which are already sore from the brushing and flossing. I worry about her concentration.
The smell of popcorn wafts into the room, and I discover through my stealth eavesdropping that the dentist is making popcorn.
Soon, this torturous procedure is finished, and she moves on to the most dreaded part, the cleaning. I choose mint toothpaste over grape and bubble gum, because what am I going to do? Eat the toothpaste? Certainly not out of the privacy of my own home! She takes out that circular headed cleaning apparatus, and begins the process. It sounds like a drill, but worst of all is its sickly sweetness that makes me want to gag. She tells me to rinse, and I can feel the granules of the toothpaste crunching between my teeth. I rinse as quickly as possible, and with as much water as that small but powerful stream will give me.
But soon enough, it is over, and she hands me over to another assistant (not the fish-man one) who spreads flouride foam in my mouth with a long cotton swab, gives me a hand-held alarm and tells me to swish for one minute. It taste like strawberries, not the candy version, but real strawberries, but somehow without the same satisfaction.
The actual dentist is finally called in, and he checks for cavities by poking my teeth with a sharp utensil, making sure they�re not �spongy.�
Thankfully, after I gratefully refuse a cheap plastic trinket from the treasure chest (although at one point I was quite keen on those plastic glow in the dark bracelets), I am out of the dental office. Luckily, I only have to repeat this process every six months.