Tooth Truths

Yesterday I went to the dentist. This is a new kind of dentist where they actually care about you, but that didn’t make the experience much easier. They stuck a camera in my mouth so I could see what my teeth look like up close: they look like an asteroid field. It’s actually a wonder I have any teeth left at all. Through the wonders of an exotic and incurable anxiety disorder, I have ground them into a fine powder. Sadly, I chewed through all of the dental appliances I have been prescribed to address these problems over the years. I am like a piranha. My aunt was the dentist’s assistant and kept telling me how I take after her with my oral and coronary problems. For once, I’d like to take after someone’s physical benefits. If my teeth or heart don’t explode when I’m not looking, my health is generally all right, but I don’t have a single bodily feature that anyone would write home about. On the other hand, my prodigious mental abilities could knock a satellite out of orbit; I used to think I inherited this from my father before I discovered he was a fan of Rush Limbaugh, that radio monster whose bellicose mendacity is transparent to kindergarteners and dandelions.

I just had a flashback to a time when I went to a deli with my father, or it may have been with the door-to-door salesman who kidnapped me that time. I think it was in a strip mall. That was back when I had teeth and they were more or less white.

Comments

Have you ever noticed that "deep cleaning" is an anagram of "panic, need gel"? I am a dentist phobe if there ever was one. I've resolved to only go back if I am experiencing dismal pain. Until then, my theory is that if I ain't feeling it, he ain't filling it.

When I take inventory of the various 'qualities' I've inherited from my parents, I wonder what the hell made them think they needed to breed in the first place.

Really.

I wear glasses, I have bad skin and thin hair, I'm selfish, then there's the arrhythmia, and don't even get me started on their various anxiety/panic issues. Sometimes I wish they could have settled for hamsters.

I buy the sports mouth guards. I chew through them, too...but it only costs me about $3 every six months or so, and it does wonders for protecting my precious enamel.

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