“Are you doing anything today?” asked the young man in my local supermarket as I purchased my newspaper.
“Dentist!” I replied.
“Oh, I hate the dentist,” he continued.
“I absolutely love it!” I didn’t say.
Of course, I don’t love going to the dentist’s surgery. It means I am going to have my teeth and gums poked about and there will be an element of discomfort.
People are fond of saying how much they dislike certain places, the main one being hospitals. “I hate hospitals”, says just about everyone, as if there are some of us who enjoy the experience, even just visiting. I used to work with someone who refused to visit even close relatives in hospital because he hated it. That’s just a crappy excuse, actually.
I went to my dentist this morning with a swollen gum, which at first my dentist thought was an abscess. One X Ray later he confirmed it wasn’t an abscess. “Good news!” I thought. But it wasn’t. It turned out the tooth beneath my swollen gum was split in two, maybe even three. “It will have to come out”, said my dentist, sympathetically.
“Just a little prick!” he didn’t say, as he filled my mouth with novocaine.
“It’s the cold weather,” I didn’t reply.
Several pulls and cracks later, the tooth came out, in bits. I glanced in my reflection to see blood all over my face. Full of anaesthetic, half of my face and all of my mouth wasn’t working properly. Apart from that, I felt fine.
I now have a large hole where a tooth used to be. It’s a murky red colour, with stitches holding the rest of my gum together. I feel like I have just been 12 rounds with Audley Harrison: absolutely fine!
There must be a hint of sadism about the dentist. Why would you do it? You know that most of your customers don’t want to be there but you make things worse by conducting conversations with them, whereupon they dribble hopelessly in reply. And that’s another thing. It scarcely matters with me in near old age, but I remember the embarrassment of spitting out the mouthwash after a filling, watched by the pretty dental assistant I had pre-injection been chatting up and trying to impress. Pride comes before a fall, eh?
I like my dentist. He’s a really nice bloke, even if he did vote to leave the EU (his kids are furious with him). He’s sorted out my gums by pulling one of my teeth which was dead anyway. Sadly, I was one of the 1960s Ribena generation which guaranteed a lifetime or repairs, crowns and the occasional extraction. I like my dentist but I don’t like going to see him, if you know what I mean.
