Clean, for a bit anyway

If you’d seen Jaimie and me out and about this morning, you’d have seen my tongue rolling around my teeth, top and bottom, inside and out.

You see, I went to the dentist yesterday and I was enjoying the newest layer of whatever polish they put on them. There’s nothing quite like that feeling.

It wasn’t always that way.

Growing up in a small town, we had two dentists and the one that I went to was known by we elementary school kids as “The Driller”. We would share horror stories of our experiences and just worked each other up when we knew that one of our friends had to make a visit.

The whole experience just brings back such horrid memories.

First, the office was on the second storey and you had to walk about a million steps to get there – mostly straight up.

Then, you’d carefully open the door to the waiting room, hoping that you didn’t hit someone and feel your heart sink when you saw how many people were sitting there waiting. School was always so important to our family and there was no way that my mother would give me a note to get out of school. I had to line up with everyone else in the late afternoon and wonder what wonderful supper I was missing.

There was just one room and he did it all by himself. A little soundproofing would have been nice so that we didn’t have to listen to the drill and the screams of kids not nearly as brave as me. Truth be told, the macho me screamed inside. For some reason, I also remember the waiting room as being incredibly warm and humid. Take my memory with a grain of salt.

After about four hours of waiting, it would be my turn. As a youngster, there always seemed to be a cavity or two so that I got the whole experience. The numbing thing, the needle, the freezing that always seemed to kick in on the way home. And then, the noise of the drill. I swear it was designed to get you to be a better brusher so that you didn’t have return visits.

Looking back now, we were fortunate to have a dentist in our small town. He was efficient; it was just that there were so many people. All the drills included the machinery used to polish the teeth; they just looked so Machiavellian. The freezing actually did its job; it just that it kept doing it all the way home and throughout the evening so you had to be careful eating that cold leftover supper.

Eventually, we had a second dentist set up a practice with only 3 or 4 steps to get to his office but we remained loyal to “The Driller”.

So, we move to yesterday where it’s a completely different experience. Covid has been good; there aren’t legions of people in a waiting room. We got in quickly. Picking at my teeth is an experience that remains from my childhood! Man, I hate that.

Photo by Benyamin Bohlouli on Unsplash

And, it was really noisy. During Covid times, all of the individual rooms were wrapped in heavy plastic and I now recognize and appreciate the sound-absorbing ability. My wife was in the next room and I could hear her conversation just as clearly as if she was next to me.

A little polish; a visit from the actual dentist, and I was on my way.

As I sat in the chair being attended to, all the childhood memories came back. Being a techno-geek, a look around this room at all the fancy equipment gave me a better appreciation for my first dentist. I’m sure that everything was the best of high tech at the time and the concern was over-exaggerated by our kids who had nothing better to do than try to scare each other.

Knock wood, but I haven’t had the whole cavity/drilling experience for years. I’m much better at taking care of my teeth these days and it does pay off.

But, there’s still that something special you feel when you run your tongue across freshly polished teeth. If you could create something that would give me that feeling at home, I’d be all over it in a heartbeat.