A Disquisition on Dentistry
A Disquisition on Dentistry
By Dustin King
I hate the dentist. Big fucking deal,right? Everyone openly hates the dentist. Furthermore, scientific studies show that 9 in 10 people who claim to be "big fans" of dentists have no friends and go to the prom with their estranged cousin. Ok that's not true, at all, but the point is I hate going to the dentist.
It started from a very young age, I was regularly going to Dr. Hannah off state street (you know, the place right next to the Lake Theatre where you convinced your parents to park illegally because you didn't want to miss the previews before "Batman Forever"). Let me first say I'm not the best dental patient ever, I've never flossed a day in my life and I like to see my teeth as an "off-white" rather than "slightly-yellow". There was always this hygenist who would give me the hardest fucking time when I was about 5 years old, lets see if I can paint a picture for you:
Husky, short hair and overweight. Cliche lesbian, but I was too young to know what carpet munching was. It also didn't help that at age 5 I could pick up on the fact that this woman had the worst disposition of anyone I had ever met. I was definitely old enough to know this lady was a straight up bitch.
First she would trick me into putting the most awful flouride shit in my mouth. "You should probably try marshmallow, it's our new flavor, all the kids love it." she said, to which I said something lame and passive agressive to the effect of "ok". What did I care? I was too busy kicking ass at the sonic the hedgehog handheld game she slapped in front of my face. Too bad that was the worst shit i've ever tasted my entire life to this day, far worse than the lemon flavored flouride I was so accustomed to.
Imagine the ugliest person you know. Then imagine them dropping their pants. Then imagine Rick Moranis from television and film's "Honey I shrunk the whatever" shrinking this persons ass down to a manageable bite and plopping it in your mouth. You can't chew though, nope, there is just this ass hanging in limbo right on your tongue. Slowly seeping down into your throat.
Sonic the hedgehog got me through some hard times.
So after I whet my pallet on the finest flouride they had to offer, the irrate bitch proceeds to chew out a 5 year old for not brushing enough and not flossing. My parents went to the trouble of building me a cute little box with a teddy bear painted on it for me to stand on and brush my teeth, it was cute and everything but no way was it going to get me away from my nintendo. Second of all, who the fuck flosses at 5?
I really wish I had the mental capacity and sarcasm at that point in my life to say to her, as she was prodding me "You know, I may not floss as often as you do but then again I don't have nearly as much big mac residue to floss as you do, fatass."
Sadly I lacked the lessons in vocabular, sentence structure and humor. But know that when time machines are made, regardless of however much I may or may not fuck up the space time continuum, that is the first thing i'm doing. first thing.
Anyway, I've hated dentists ever since.
So I go in today for my yearly cleaning. Now since the days of Dike Mc'Dentist and her trusty Essence of Ass Flouride, I have changed dentists. These people level with me, they realize I will probably never ever floss, but it must be in their contract or something to be verbally abusive regardless. Today she asks how my teeth are, "fine I say. I mean i'm still slacking off, but whats new?" so she gets out the big fucking metal pick as if shes about to chissle out some sculpture of michaelangelo.
This is when I force myself to space out, I look up and I see this poster of a snowy mountain top and I go there in my mind. It's cold and wintery and I imagine being hunkered down in my own little snow bunker, piling up snowball after snowball. Watching. Waiting. AND THEN I UNLEASH HELL ON EVERY FUCKING PERSON WHO HAS VIOLATED MY MOUTH WITH A METAL POLE IN MY LIFE. It's truly fantastic how my imagination works in horrible situations. Sadly, part of me is back in that chair trying really hard not to deck this bitch. She keeps telling me to relax my jaw, and open my mouth wider.
Wow. I am so utterly sorry that my natural reaction to being stabbed in the gums is to close my mouth, I really don't know what came over me. This goes on for about 40 minutes with the fucking metal pick and the nuclear powered flouride brush.
The whole snowball fantasty isn't really doing it for me anymore, and then I remember with a glint in my eye that Dentists have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. In fact, and I looked it up, "...Dentists' odds of suicide are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population" (Steven Stack). And then I start to legitemately think "what if everyone in this office killed themselves right now? what would you do?" and I came to the honest conclusion that I would walk out the door whistling. It was raining today, so probably something to the tune of singing in the rain. No that's too cliche, maybe zippity doo da.
The dentist comes in and informs me (reluctantly) that my teeth are fine and I have no cavities. Kinda like when a cop sees you speeding, but he doesn't clock you so he can't bust you. I thought it would be rather inappropriate for me to raise my middle finger, but I really wanted to.
For a second, the part of me with a soul starts to think that these are honest working folk and maybe they're not all that bad, but then I realize who the fuck goes into dentistry? At a circle of friends in high school or college, people are like "I want to be a lawyer....I want to be a doctor...I want to be a rock star...I want to be a baseball player" who THE FUCK says "I want to examine dirty mouths on a daily basis!"
It's not as if these people fell into this gig either, no they go to years of school for it. The guys working at Chevron "fall into" that gig.
The worst part is, when I left, I ran my tongue across my teeth and I was pissed at myself because my teeth felt really good. Like that bitch on the orbit gum commercial (fuck her, by the way).
Regardless of how shitty I felt about not being able to rationalize my hatred for the field of dentistry, I still hate that one bitch when I was five.
I go to Eugene tomorrow. Bye.