Always Brush Your Teeth

Last month I paid a “visit” to my dentist. I am using the term “visit,” because in many ways, going to the dentist’s office is a lot like a social occasion, although a highly unpleasant one, sort of like a bad date. And since my mother always said Never Let The Guy Pick You Up In His Car Until You’ve Known Him For A While, because it lets you stay in control in case things start to take a bad turn and you want to get out of there NOW, I drove to the dentist’s office in my own car.

WARNING: LONG PARAGRAPH AHEAD

When I got to the office (which, by the way, is located on the 4th floor of an office building that has six floors, and when you get in the elevator there are only five buttons, and there is a sign that says “exit at 5 for 6th floor,” so apparently anyone who wants to go to the 6th floor has to get out on the 5th floor and walk up, which leads me to wonder exactly what is ON the 6th floor, but I am afraid to go up there so I guess I will never know. Once when I got in the elevator a man got on with me and I stayed in the elevator even though my mother always said Never Stay In An Elevator Alone With A Strange Man, but he didn’t look that strange, actually, he was just a normal-looking sort of guy, balding a little bit but not bad-looking on the whole, no missing teeth or anything, and his shirt was even tucked in, so I stayed in the elevator and I pointed to the sign and I said to him, “The elevator doesn’t go to the top floor,” expecting him to laugh, but evidently he didn’t know that this is a euphemism for “not the brightest bulb in the pack,” so he just stared at me blankly and I smiled weakly and turned and stared at the numbers above the door until we got to the 4th floor and I could get out) –where was I?

Oh, yes- when I got to the office, I went in and gave my name to the receptionist, and sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs that dentists always have in their waiting rooms. There must be a special catalogue that doctors and dentists order their chairs from—the “Uncomfortable Chair Company,” perhaps, but I don’t know why they’d want to do this, because you’d think that if they are going to make you sit there, fuming, because your appointment was for 11:30 and you rushed to get there on time so the receptionist wouldn’t look at you sternly when you walked in three minutes late, the way your third-grade teacher used to, and even if the Stern Look doesn’t bother you, who knows what other punishments they have for being TARDY? Not only might they tell you that you have Missed Your Appointment and now you owe $55 and you have to come back Another Day, but they might even make you Stay After and clean the erasers (or in this case, since the dentist probably doesn’t use too many erasers, the Water-Pik)—you’d think that if they were going to make you sit through all of this, the least they could do is have comfortable chairs.

Now it’s almost noon, and you are considering walking brazenly through that door and telling the dentist that he has missed HIS Appointment and now he owes YOU $55. But you know you won’t do that, so you just sit there meekly and wait until the dentist is ready. So that’s what I did.

To pass the time, I “amused” myself by leafing through a year-old issue of “Today’s Dentistry.” (Actually, though, since it was a year old, that would really be “Yesterday’s Dentistry.” But let’s not get picky.)

Finally, the dentist came out into the waiting room and he greeted me very sweetly, with a big smile on his face, and acted as though he was sincerely glad to meet me (which I’m sure was true, because he knew that I was about to pay him $800.) “Come on in,” he said, and “Have a seat,” as if he were inviting me into his living room to have a drink and sit in his comfortable chair and relax and visit for a while. The only thing missing was the fireplace and the soft lighting.

I settled myself into the chair, and his assistant, who was already wearing a mask (which I found sort of offensive, because it’s not like I have Bubonic Plague or anything,) put a little purple paper bib around my neck and then, without warning, lowered the back of the chair so that I was lying down. The dentist, meanwhile, was puttering around with his Instruments Of Torture—I mean, Dental Instruments—and humming, and every so often he’d absent-mindedly ask me a question, like, “How are we doing today?” and then immediately begin humming again without waiting for an answer, or even seeming to expect one, which I guess is what dentists consider “conversation,” because most of the time when they talk to you, you can’t answer them anyway because your mother always told you Not To Talk With Your Mouth Full.

When the dentist apparently was satisfied that his Dental Instruments were sufficiently sharp, he turned to me and rubbed his hands together and said, “Okay!” with more glee than I thought was appropriate; but after all, the kind of people who decide to become dentists are probably people who really, truly find this kind of stuff thrilling. (I think in other contexts these people are called “sadists.”) Then he lowered the back of my chair even more so that now my head was actually lower than my feet, because the first thing they teach in Dental School is, “Always Make The Patient As Uncomfortable As Possible Before Beginning Any Actual Dental Work.” (The second thing they teach is, “Always Make Sure That The Light Shines Directly Into The Patient’s Eyes.”)

Then he started with the poking, the probing, the squirting of air and water, and finally the painful injections into my gums, after which he left the room, and there I was, all alone, in Dental Limbo, without even anything to read, because, unfortunately, I had neglected to bring that copy of “Today’s Dentistry” with me from the waiting room.

After about ten minutes, the dentist finally came back into the room, and gave me another one of those cheery smiles, and promptly got to work on my teeth. He picked up his dental instruments one by one off the little tray. At this point I realized that he must have been absent from Dental School on the day that they discussed “How To Position The Tray That Holds The ‘Instruments Of Torture’ ” (sorry—“Dental Instruments,”) and therefore the tray must have been too far away, since instead of replacing the Instruments on the tray after he used them, he put them on my CHEST, which was in a conveniently horizontal position since he had moved my chair All The Way Back. Every time he needed one of those instruments, he just picked it up off my chest. And since the work was complicated and long, there was a lot of stuff on my chest. Something that looked like a glue gun, with blue stuff in it. Various picks and probes. A metal plate used to hold sticky green stuff for taking an impression of my teeth. And apparently a lot of other stuff that I couldn't see, based on how often he was touching my chest. And a couple of times he was trying to pick up stuff that must have been small and hard to grasp with those rubber gloves on—let’s just say that when I left his office, my mouth wasn't the only part of my body that was sensitive.

By this point, this Dental Experience that had started out like a bad date was beginning to seem more like a sexual assault. It had all the elements of Date Rape—the seduction, the drugs, the intimate setting, the groping, the clumsy fondling—and then there is the fact that he was breathing hard and sweating, which just added to the general atmosphere. And since he was sitting sort of behind me and to the side a little bit and leaning on me, try to imagine what part of his body the top of my head was pressed against. All in all, I was glad to get out of there, and not just because of the actual work being done on my teeth.

I get to go back in 3 weeks for more dental work. Lucky me!

I really, really, really wish I had listened to my mother’s advice when I was a kid: Always Brush Your Teeth.