Dental madness

Certain things come to mind when I am sitting in the chair at the dentist.

When I was a kid growing up in Northern Michigan, one of the things that bound us all together was a program called Swish. Maybe you had it too? Anyway, once a week important-looking people came into our classrooms with trays of small cups filled with a vile liquid I can still smell if I think about it. We had to swish it around in our mouths while a timekeeper made sure we weren't skimping. Y'all know - it was flouride. I don't think city water was flouridated up there in the 70s, and we had to do that all through grade school.

The next thing that comes to mind is my clean, clean robot dentist, who never had any smell except clean and who always freaked me out.

Third on the list is the stitches I had to get after the abovementioned incident, and how the Novocaine wore off in the grocery store and I kept following mom around and saying stuff like "I can't feel my lips yet, but there's my tongue!" and I think everybody in the store generally felt sorry for her.

Fourth up is how I used to go to a dentist who had a mild form of Tourette's, and I always wonder why I let him drill on my teeth when he had such a tic. But he never twitched while he worked on me. (I am not making this up.)

That makes me think about how I'm sitting in this chair and I don't even know who's going to look at my teeth because my dentist was killed recently in a car accident. Turns out the new guy is super friendly and a kidder. The hygenist, referring to the fact that I have all my teeth including my wisdom teeth and no cavities, says "You're going to LOVE her teeth." I clamp my hands in front of my face and giggle. He says, "They must be that good, huh? Let's see!" Still hiding my teeth I blurt out "I file my teeth into points!" and he makes some joke about National Geographic specials and then everything was okay. But it was dodgy.

Last, the story I finally tell my hygenist while she's picking a toothpaste is how they always did the flouride trays at the dentist when I was a kid, and I always swallowed it and threw up in the dentist's office. My clean dentist! No wonder he was so clean. I vividly remember running for the toilet and hoping I'd make it. You know what she said? That to this day when she smells "dentist office" she thinks that vomit-cleaner-upper stuff is part of the smell. Because so many kids get sick at the dentist.

All that was happening when she sprayed air on my teeth to check for something (sensitivity, maybe) and I jolted out of my chair and heard her say "well, that's not good." I don't know if it's the whitening toothpaste I use or what, but something made my teeth really touchy. So I have to use prescription toothpaste for two weeks and hope that clears it up.

At least I didn't have to get flouride. Four more rows on Clapotis complete. And yes, I'll be turning the light out when I leave. I am fully aware that I am the last person in North America to complete this scarf.