Have you ever seen those commercials on TV where the nice bleach blonde lady tells you that you can earn a degree in your spare time? They list all the careers one can take. Electrician, accountant, plumber, dental hygienist “or get your degree!” they say, in a chipper tone. Do you know who applies? Freaks. At least, that’s the only way I can describe my experience at the dentist.
She seemed nice enough, as I walked, groggily, to the back room. I’ve had 14 teeth pulled, two fillings and almost 6 years of braces. The dentist’s chair doesn’t really scare me. But it would. I laid back and mumbled answers to questions such as “How old are you?” and the like. I listened to the Muzak in the ceiling.
“You make me feel like an angel.” It said in a non-offensive tone. “Your kisses are like heaven!”
I sat back and she leaned into my mouth with an electric power-sander with some sort of polish rubbed on the end. “EHURRR” it said. She warned me of the splashing water and that it may hurt. Water? May hurt? I let it drip away, so to speak, and awaited her next fiendish doings.
She reached for a tiny steel scythe with a rounded end that looked a lot like Captain Hook’s first hand. She poked the little area of gums above each tooth. She would shout a number for each time she poked me.
“3. 3. 4. 3. 3. 3. 2. 2. 2. 4. 3. 3. 4. 5. 4. 3. 3. 3.” She said, as if she were reading what was already written on my gums. “3. 3. 3. 3. 2. 2. 2.” She intoned. I could tell that she was rating each area of gums. I could also tell by the painful piercing and blood that came every time she yelled two that getting a Two in this game was bad. She took a break from her stabbing. The man she was barking at looked up. He was a brawny foreign man with a jet black mustache, and is entirely useless to the story. I heard the music.
“Just like heaven, baby! I love to kiss you!”
She continued. For five minutes she poked and re-poked every morsel of the throbbing, tender flesh of my gum line. Once every tooth was blanketed in pain and blood, she looked at me very gravely.
“This is very bad.” She stood upright, looking at me with the face one would put on to talk to a recently diagnosed cancer patient. “What’s happening,” she intoned, “is that the little microbes that live between your teeth are excreting waste products, just like any other living thing.” I pictured my teeth with tiny blobs making consistent bowel movements on my gums. “If you don’t take care of your gums, when you get your braces off, you’ll have puffy gums. Have you ever seen anyone with puffy gums?” I hadn’t. “I guess you haven’t. I’m going to prescribe to you a dental wash.” I asked if that was like mouthwash. She said, “No, it’s a dental wash.” I asked, Do you use it like mouth wash? She said, “What you do is you put it in your mouth for a minute and swoosh it around.”
“Like mouthwash?” She gave up. She said it was a little like mouth wash.
When the
main dentist came in to evaluate her evil handicraft, she blurted, “42 bleeding
points!” She said it like a little schoolgirl who had discovered Timmy behind
the swings with his pants off. She was a
tattletale and had a thoroughly satisfied look about her. The main dentist, also a woman, said
something about how flossing was important and went on. The evil hygienist led me to the front.
“You’re just like an angel,
baby!” the ceiling sang. “Your smile is
like heaven!”