Dentist

It's hard to make yourself write about something, especially if you have as repetitious a lifestyle as I.  But my friend is hounding me to try and post at least every other day.  If anything it's so he has something else to read on a day to day basis while bored at work.

I guess what I will talk about this time is going to the dentist.  Don't let your eyes glaze over with cliche protection, I'm not going to talk about how much I hate the sounds of the drills or the other patients screaming (which I did hear by the way), or the boring small talk.  Alright maybe I will mention the small talk in this post, can you blame me though, this is about going to the dentist.

I set my alarm last night for 8:00 in the morning since I knew I had to get up and get this appointment over with at 10:30.  I thought it would give me some time to get settled into the day and not have to rush things.  So inevitably I stay up way too late watching Six Feet Under while constantly compromising with my sleep schedule.  "It's 2 o'clock now so I will still get 6 hours of sleep that should be fine."  "It's 2:30, I'll live with just five and a half hours no biggie."  3:00am - "I guess I should change my alarm to 9 to get those 6 hours."  4:00 - "Wow it's fucking 4 o'clock already? I'll just set my alarm a little later."  This situation works out to me going to sleep god knows when and waking up to my alarm clock at 10:07, my only guess is that I changed it to 10:00 am and my R.E.M. sleep allowed me to bypass 7 minutes of the staccato buzzing.

For you locals reading this post, I live in Chesapeake and my dentist's office is inside DePaul Hospital, in Norfolk.  I have now given myself twenty three minutes to get out of bed, get dressed, brush my teeth, (half heartedly but what am I going to do?  Leave the house for the dentist without some quick maintenance?), find my keys, and drive to the dentist.  Bear in mind following the speed limit it takes about 25-30 minutes to arrive at the dentist's office from my house.

I walk in the office door with about 3 minutes to spare.  I'm greeted by 3-4 older women who have all worked there since I was born.  I sign the sign-in sheet showing I had arrived even though it was like I had just walked onto the Cheers set.  I pick up a Highlights, the magazine I have always read whenever waiting in the dentist's office ever since I could read, and get this I'm sitting there reading and waiting for at least 20 minutes.  Good thing I rushed and tiptoed along the line of "you're going to jail for driving that fast".

I finally get called in by my dental hygienist.  I'm ushered to the same familiar plastic covered green chair whose color could only have originated in the fifties.  I get a bib put on me (the only situation someone will do that to me in my life post-highchair and pre-senility).  The chair lowers me into position for cleaning and I open up.

The thoughts going through my head circle mainly around my hygienist as the inside of my mouth is the most uncomfortable it has been for the past six months.  There's always people in life that will see you twice.  The first time they meet you, you will be too young to remember.  The second time they meet you they don't have access to any topic of conversation other than the first time they met you and that you were "thiiiiiis big".  This woman that sticks her hands in my mouth every six months is someone I actually relate to when she talks about my childhood memories that I should have.  Every 6 months for 22 years I have met this woman, and each time is as awkward as the last.  There is no way that I can go to this dentist and not engage in the social faux pas of idle conversation while settling down to open my mouth.  When I was little I was scared of her, and now when I'm grown up I'm scared of the social awkwardness of a forced lifetime acquaintance.

Every time, no matter my train of thought, my mind will wander to the same things:
Does she use a crazy high power pneumatic toothbrush at home like the one she's using on me?
Does she know how bad this toothpaste tastes and how gritty it is?
I hope she doesn't ask me something while my mouth is open limiting my answers to AHH, UHH, or UH-UH-UHHH (the last one is "I don't know").
I wonder who does her teeth.  Can she clean her own teeth?
I would try with my mind powers to get her to pour extra water for me when it was time for me to rinse and spit.

This time at the dentist was different than my last 43 visits (give or take).  I had a secret weapon, an ace up my sleeve.  I have been flossing for the past two weeks.  The only thing to keep my oral hygiene regular enough to brush twice a day and floss at least once was the thought of my dental hygienist and my dentist saying to me, "Foster!  After 22 years of telling you, you finally flossed! Yay!"  Guess what they said?  Not a damn thing.  The flossing part of the routine came and went without a word.  Usually it would be the normal barrage of "Now Foster do you floss?" "Kinda, I try to when I remember." "You need to be flossing everyday to get between those teeth." "I know :( ."  This time I was excited about how the conversation would go.  Never did I suspect that my two weeks of fastidiously wrapping string around my fingers would lead to only a culling of the mild assault, I thought I at least earned some praise and maybe a pencil with a tooth shaped eraser.

After leaving the dentist almost heartbroken I drove home at a pace slower than the one in which I had arrived.