The Dentist

I went to the dentist straight after work, my new dentist directly across the road from my current work assignment. I’ve been going to a dentist in St Kilda for quite a while, but recently I have been changing such service providers to ones closer to home. I told him that I’d been to a periodontist in the city for the last… oh, how long has it been? …number of years, but I hadn’t been for the last twelve months. I was a little ashamed of myself, but there it was. He said he’d give my teeth a deep clean, as I must be used to that having been to a periodontist for however many years it has been. The usual procedure ensued. The pointy sticky tool. The cleany zzzzzz thing. The scrappy hook thing. There were a few zzz’s and ouches, but mostly it was the same nervy, scrapey, picky stuff. The pointy thing was stuck up under my gums looking for nerves, the hook ripped at things that seemingly didn’t want to be ripped at, then the polishy circular brush thing polished it all off, searching for more nerves in the process. I was left with the usual gravely debris stuff that I had to swill out of my mouth and spit into “the spittoon.” (modern, white, porcelain, clean, stylish,” that is what I am looking for Patsy, that! That’s what I want!)

“You are a very good patient,” said the dentist when it was all done.

“My uncle was my dentist in the first sixteen years of my life, (dear Uncle Bill)” I said, “so I guess it was fun going to the dentist and it never occurred to me to be scared. I think that has stayed with me.”

He laughed. “Oh no, you are excellent. Very relaxed. Very calm. That was a deep clean, deeper than I ever normally do. If I cleaned the young generation’s teeth (thanks so much for the older generation reference, I thought) like I just cleaned your teeth, they would squeal and scream and insist that they could never be hurt in such a way. There would be quite a performance, let me tell you, but you never made a sound, nor did you jump once.”

The dental nurse agreed with him, by nodding at his sage like words.

I hardly felt any discomfort, at all. Whiny little bitches. But, just between you and me, I wondered, momentarily, if all the nerves in my teeth are completely dead, I felt so little. I smiled and nodded my head. They both smiled and nodded their heads in return, as though something had just taken place between us. But on the inside, let me tell you, I had my Dame Edna Everage face on.