A trip to the dentist office
A trip to the dentist officeGoing to the dentist has changed since I was a kid.
Oh, sure, the chair's the same, the overhead light's the same, the sharp, gum-piercing tools are the same, the posters with smiling teeth telling you not to play with Mr. Tooth Decay are the same. But the little things are different.
You're never asked to spit anymore. Going to a dentist when I was young meant two things: 1) Mom would tell me if I acted like a baby she'd treat me like one, and 2) the dentist would ask me to spit into a little toilet bowl sitting on a pedestal next to the chair.
"OK, spit," the dentist would say, but not until he noticed me gagging on my own blood.
I'd lean over that little toilet bowl and spit up something that looked like it came out of the refuse bin at a slaughterhouse.
"Uh, doc. That's kind of chunky. What is it?"
"I don't know. It may be part of your colon."
The little toilet bowls are gone. Dentists now use suction tubes to slurp the spit right out of your mouth. I've never asked where all that spit goes. Maybe it goes to an undeveloped country that can't afford its own spit.
I went to the dentist the other day to have my teeth cleaned.
The problem is, you can't just go to the dentist to have your teeth cleaned. The dentist office is like a national oil and lube chain. Sure, you take your car in for an oil change, but even though your car was driving fine when you brought it in, it now needs enough work done to put the manager's son through college.
"Now, before I rake furrows into the flesh of your gums with a tiny stainless steel hook," the dental assistant said, "I'm going to bombard your head with radiation."
All right, she didn't actually say that. What she said was, "before I clean your teeth, I need to take a few X-rays." I was just paraphrasing.
She covered me in a strangely comfortable lead-lined vest and pointed a machine at me that looked like a torture device used by the Klingons, or the Cylons, or one of those 'ons' who always seem to be in such a foul mood.
Then she left the room.
Why is it that the person taking X-rays of your teeth wanders off to some concrete bunker four miles away before she unleashes radiation into a pretty important part of your body?
Just curious.
Then she cleaned my teeth. As a kid, dental assistants never used rubber gloves when they flossed me. I'm not even sure they washed their hands after using the lavatory. As a kid, you don't care.
But she snapped on gloves, then gave me safety goggles.
When did safety goggles on the patient become an integral part of dentistry? I guess dentists are as afraid of lawyers as everyone else.
The dentist came in after her assistant finished up all the sloppy work. She looked at the X-rays. Then into my mouth.
"You've got an old filling here," she said, jabbing the filling with a sharp tool the KGB refused to employ in interrogations because they couldn't bring themselves to be that mean. "It's coming loose and you're starting to get a cavity there. I'll have to replace it."
"Will it hurt?" I asked.
"Not a bit," she lied.
Hey, I guess visiting the dentist hasn't changed that much after all.
