When I was a kid, it seemed like I spent a great deal of time at the dentist's office. I always had some cavity or another. Then there were braces. Then there was that time when I was jumping on my friend Jimmy's trampoline and my knee connected with my mouth -- fortunately, I was still wearing the braces; didn't do much for my knee, but because of the braces the dentist was able to shove the tooth back in and cement it in place until it could reattach on its own.
Dentist's offices.
That high-pitched whine of dentistry tools. The sucking, slurpy vacuuming of the drool suctioner (no idea what it might actually be called). The smell of antiseptics and novocaine (not really sure novocaine has a smell, but that's the association in my head).
There was also the "look" of the dentist's office: pale paint or wallpaper on the walls, maybe a painting of a ship scene or flowers or something by Monet (never the really appropriate stuff, like the diabolical images by Hieronymus Bosch, or the Black Paintings by Goya). Pleasant imagery intended to distract you from the chrome and bright lights of the dentistry chair.
Ah, yes, the chair.
Those ribbed seats, the pale green (or possibly grey) pleather, the manacles. Okay, maybe I'm misremembering about the manacles. Or maybe I'm not. To sit in a dentist's chair is to be locked into the dentist's chair, manacles or no. Once there, you, the subject, are constrained by the drool bib (often tied around your neck with a chain), by the slurpy, sucky machinery jammed into your mouth, by the numbness spreading across your face from the anesthetic, by the dentist and nurses hemming you in on every side.
What fun. Yes ... sarcasm.
So, once childhood was over and the braces were out, I rarely went to the dentist. I did go one time while I was living in Old Mexico. Years and years of drinking soda had left my teeth less than optimally bright, so I decided to have them whitened. My visit came with a cleaning. Just like in the States, this dentist's "cleaning" involved metal scrapers, tongue depressors, and what I suspect was industrial-grade acid.
Recently, though, I was forced tovisit a dentist's office again. I didn't want to. I put it off. But after spending a number of Thanksgiving holiday meals chewing on the wrong side of my mouth (hey, I have a favorite side; no need to make a Federal case out of it) because a filling had come out, I decided to, um, bite the bullet. But, uh, not really, 'cause that would, you know, hurt.
I shopped around carefully for a dentist. I asked friends, I check Angie's List (the online database of consumer reviews of local service providers), I went to see a psychic. Finally, I settled on a random office that I'd seen while driving down the street. It was close to my house and had "smile" in the name. What more could I want?
A bit nervous, I went. The foyer had a video screen showing people's mouths -- before and after shots. There was also a painting of flowers. Nothing by Bosch. I filled out the requisite paperwork and was sitting in a dental chair within twenty minutes of my arrival.
The chair itself was comfy. No ribbed pleather. The walls of the room were bright and cheery. There were more pictures of flowers, but they seemed to fit. There was also another video screen, this one right above the chair. It cycled through images of landscapes. The dentist told me that they could plug in a movie for me to watch during the procedure, if I liked.
I elected to not make anyone sufferthrough "It's a Wonderful Life" (for the four hundredth time), or even "Ice Age 2."
The dentist was friendly and explained what he was doing at every point. The aide was pretty and didn't drop anything sharp on me (always a bonus). The novocaine was ...
Well, novocaine is novocaine. My mouth was numb and swollen for hours afterwards. And the drool suction was still noisy and slurpy. And the drill bit still sounded like something used in various Third-World countries to get spies to confess.
It'll likely be a few more years before I go back to a dentist.
Even if I have to chew on the wrong side of my mouth.
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Def."Toothsome": delicious ,luscious; pleasant, attractive; sexually attractive or exciting. ie: Nothing really to do with this particular essay.