At the Dentist's

Went to the dentist's office yesterday morning. I actually enjoy the visits to the dentist. I didn't used to, but my current dentist is excellent and isn't of the painful variety. I just went for X rays and a cleaning. The whole X ray thing still scares me. The first warning sign is that they put a lead vest on me, not only will the radiation be limited to zapping only my head, but if a gun wielding terrorist decided to attack my dentist's office, I'll be safe. The next red flag is that the dental technician leaves the state before I hear the buzz of pure radiation aimed at my brain. If that's not bad enough, they just don't zap me once, but six times. Even a neuralyzer loses effect after the first couple of shots.

So after the dental assistant makes it back to the room, it's time to get the cleaning done. The dentist pulls out a power washer for an ant-sized deck and the assistant shoves a mini wet-dry vac into the side of my mouth. Though not comfortable, still not painful. After five minutes and ten gallons of high velocity water, it's time to rinse and spit. I gargle sweet blue liquid from a lilliputian size cup and expel it into a miniature sink. What I see next is the part that makes me wonder how good of an idea the visit really is. I never put anything reddish orange into my mouth, but specs of reddish orange liquid always seem to end up at the bottom of the sink. I don't feel any pain, but somewhere in my mouth, I must be bleeding.

My thoughts are interrupted by the dentist looking at my X rays and proclaiming, “Everything looks fine, no work needs to be done.”. That is a huge relief to me. It means that all of the bad work my previous dentists did on my teeth, when I was a kid, has finally been corrected. All except for the tooth a dentist pulled for fear that there was not enough room in my mouth. Running my tongue over the open space, I think that with a big mouth like mine, I should have known, even at nine years old, it was a bad idea.