Teeth Cleaning

I got my teeth cleaned last week.  Finally.  I hadn’t been to a dentist in at least seven years, mainly due to a severe mistrust of the dental profession as a whole.  And not because I think dentistry is a phony profession or pseudoscience.  No, absolutely not.  Even though I find them repulsive and, dare I say, unnatural, the teeth are a part of the body, and, like any other part of the body, they deserve a designated doctor.  I get we needed to develop shorter, more blunted teeth as we evolved, but now you can’t go around and smile without flashing what looks like an ice cube tray of frozen, spoiled milk.  We humans don’t have it the worst, though.  Take any mammal in the genus Equus, for example—the horse, the donkey, the zebra, etc.  Ever pulled back the lips on one of those bad boys?  Good God.  Or, even worse, go look up the sheepshead fish.  I get the willies just thinking about those guys.  Or, switching gears, how about the narwhal—its tusk, horn thingy?  It’s just a giant fucking, inverted tooth.  But don’t get me started on the psychopaths, like Des, who don’t believe in narwhals, the unicorn of the sea.  That’s a topic for another day.

No, my dentistry distrust is rooted in the fact that, for three consecutive visits—three routine checkups—I received three separate and, in my unprofessional opinion, unrelated diagnoses.  The first dentist, Dr. Dewey, asked me if I’d had a cavity filled on my #32 molar, to which I responded yes, probably twenty-five years ago, and then he said, ah, I thought so, and, showing me an X-ray I had no idea how to read, pointed to the tooth and said, see here? your old dentist didn’t get all the gunk out before filling it and so, ever since, it’s been slowly rotting away and, unfortunately, you’re in need of a root canal and a new tooth; and then, while I was still in the chair, he had his assistant bring out the chart and the forms, telling me it’ll cost this for that one, or that for this one.  I simply said, tell you what, Doc, it’s been fine for twenty-five years, how about I come back and see you if it starts bothering me in another twenty-five, you fucking prick?  I didn’t actually say that last part, but he shouted after me as I walked out the door, saying that I was making a grave mistake.  So, about a year after that, I reckoned it was time to give it another go, and I found a new dentist, Dr. Cheatham, who turned out to be just as much of a swindling crook as Dr. Dewey, because, as an “introductory patient,” I wasn’t even allowed to get my teeth cleaned, only X-rayed, and this guy couldn’t wait to tell me I had seven—seven!—cavities that needed to be filled immediately.  I skedaddled on out of there, too, but not before forking over the $50 copay.  After that, I decided to switch up my insurance, maybe get a new crop of dentists to choose from.  I did a little research and, eventually, found a Dr. Howe, whose reviews looked promising, but, as they say in the dental world, not all that glitters in the back of your mouth is a gold tooth.  Once reclined in the examination chair, Dr. Howe apologized, informing me that a bug was going around the office and that all of her hygienists were out, but that, while I wouldn’t be getting my teeth cleaned, she was going to graciously offer me a complimentary cosmetic exam.  Well, like I said, I was already reclined, and she was basically hovering over me like a menacing, black-scrubbed wraith, so I acquiesced and, you’ll never believe this, it turned out I required two thousand dollars’ worth of work—some compositing here, some gum contouring there, definitely a fitting for Invisalign, and, if I wanted to up my game with the ladies, some whitening trays.  My game could certainly use some upping, but I said I’d need time to think about shredding that much cheddar.

Anyway, this is getting away from my initial point—that I finally got my teeth cleaned—and I only succeeded because, as a last resort, I’d called up my pediatric dentist, Dr. Krank, who also happened to be the father of a childhood friend.  Long story short, one night in middle school, I was over at my friend’s house playing Nerf gun hide-and-seek, when, desperately searching for a hiding spot, I stumbled into Dr. Krank’s office where I found him engaged in, how do I put this delicately, some vigorous hand-to-gland combat while wearing a set of virtual reality goggles.  I’d startled him, and he immediately threw off the headset and zipped himself up, cursing about how nobody in the goddamn house ever knocked and then, recognizing it was me, laughed uneasily and started stammering on about how he used the goggles to “decompress” because he could do cool things like go underwater in a shark cage or ride roller coasters—it’s really neat, Sterling, it’s like you’re really there!  Okay, Dr. Krank, whatever you say…  So, yeah, I called up Dr. Krank to ask if he could see me.  And don’t call it blackmail, because I would’ve never told his wife anyway.  What would I have even said—like, umm, hi Mrs. Krank, I don’t want to be a tattletale or anything, but while little Ronnie and I were playing in the house, I walked in on your husband playing naked chess against himself, bashing his bishop and pulling his pope?  No, not blackmail.  I was simply cashing in a favor.  He agreed, but he said only a hygienist would see me and then that was it, that I’d be out of there. 

Well, when I got there, I immediately regretted my decision.  I doubted he’d told any of his staff about our arrangement, but the woman at the front desk certainly did nothing to hide her contempt for me, scanning me up and down with a hairy eyeball, as I filled out the paperwork.  Neither did the two mothers in the waiting area, whose children were alternating between playing with the toys on the floor and banging on the glass of the fish tank, despite the sign that pleaded PLEASE DON’T BANG ON GLASS IT HURTS OUR EARS.  I guess the little snots couldn’t read.  Anyway, someone came and got me fairly quickly, and I had fun imagining the incredulous looks on those stupid mothers’ faces as I received the VIP treatment, skipping the line to the back room ahead of their children who were left wallowing on the floor. 

I was placed in the examination chair by the hygienist, Ginger, whose name I knew only because it was stitched onto her teal scrubs in pink cursive—well, that, and because the stitching happened to be positioned rather pleasantly on the right of her two protuberances.  And by protuberances, I mean her enormous breasts.  Thank the Lord she turned away, because I’m not sure I would’ve been able to divert my gaze on my own.  I then tried my best to situate myself in the examination chair, but it wasn’t easy considering my legs dangled off the far end, my feet nearly grazing the floor, but, just like I remembered, TVs were mounted in the ceiling for the patients’ viewing pleasure—or, probably more appropriate, their distraction.  The film of choice that day: The Lion King.  Ginger came back and asked what flavor toothpaste I wanted and, while I really wanted bubblegum, I figured that would make me look like a dork, but then I realized I was an adult man at a pediatric dentist office, in a chair constructed for children, so I said, fuck it, give me the bubblegum, to which she scoffed and replied that they didn’t have bubblegum, so then, trying to regain my composure, I said, okay, yeah, of course, mint was fine.  That settled, Ginger assumed her seat and got to cleaning—a bit aggressively, I might add—doing the usual with the scraping and the picking, and then the brushing and the rinsing, the latter of which was impossibly paired with the corresponding demand to spit—it’s like, how the fuck do I spit when you’re in there dueling with those competing instruments, the water nozzle and the tube, the one spraying and the one sucking?  Talk about sensory overload.  Ginger had to tell me to stop slurping the tube thing and to simply close my lips, which was a bit embarrassing, but I got the hang of it eventually, I think.   

When it was all over, Ginger basically said that I could leave, that Dr. Krank had informed her I was a special customer and didn’t need to do the normal checkout process at the front desk.  Now, I don’t know if it was because I’d just watched that scene with Simba and Nala—you know the one I’m talking about—or because the crown of my head had been nestled between Ginger’s breasts for close to half an hour, but I mustered up the courage to ask her if she had any plans for when she got done cleaning teeth that day.  She just looked at me for a few seconds and then laughed.  She pointed over near the exit, at the giant, plastic tooth full of candy and toys, and told me not to forget my prize before I left, and then she walked away, still giggling.  Well, it’s not like I wasn’t going to stick my hand in the giant treasure tooth, so, as I walked by, I slipped my arm in and, wouldn’t you know it, pulled out a piece of bubblegum.  I unwrapped it and popped it in as I exited the building, my teeth clean, my gums raw, and my ego only slightly bruised.