Waiting for Gouda

My teeth have been slightly achy lately, and so I finally broke down and did what any respectable adult would do about it. I whined and cried and stomped my feet until some reached down and gave me a piece of Melba toast. Okay, actually, I went to the dentist. I was a little bit nervous, as I had somehow accidentally skipped my last… oh, I’d say, sixteen to eighteen regular dental check-ups. You know how these things can just slip your mind. You’re in college and then you move to a new place and don’t get around to finding a dentist and then you move to another place and then another and the next thing you know, you realize that some strange man hasn’t sucked spit out of your mouth with a tube in years. (Well, except for that one New Years Eve party in Ybor City, but you doubt that did a whole lot for you in terms of oral hygiene.)

I really didn’t want to be the sort of person who dreaded going to the dentist, but I wasn’t sure what he might find in there. After you’ve spent the better part of your adult life completely ignoring something that you were supposed to have been doing twice a year all along, one must assume that there is some sort of accumulated damage that must be repaired. Like if you never got the oil changed in your car. For years. When the time finally came and you rattled on into Jiffy Lube, or wherever, you might be a bit anxious about the condition of your engine.

It wasn’t so much the pain I was worried about. In fact, I decided that I would welcome the pain. I deserved the pain. I wanted the pain. I would accept the pain as punishment for my dental complacency. It could be an almost religious experience, with my oral demons exorcised by drill and suction. I would be baptized in the flowing water of the teeny chair-side sink, and arise to go forth and neglect my gums no more.

What I really didn’t want to contemplate was the monetary cost of what would surely be a monumental excavation and reconstruction project. It’s the holiday season, after all, and the Lovely Wife™ and I are furiously attempting to complete our holiday shopping, for the second year in a row, without resorting to help from that most devious of shady loan-sharks, Mr. Visa Mastercard. Of course, I have no idea how much quality dental work costs these days (and how would I?), but I suspected that the cost for everything that would inevitably have to be done to restore my mouth to proper order would far exceed my meager means.

My appointment was for Tuesday at 4pm, and so I left work at 3 o’clock to insure that I would have plenty of time to catch the el train and then walk a few blocks to the office. I wouldn’t want to be late for my first appointment. I envisioned a big city dentist office chock full of patients, a crowded waiting room with not enough chairs, with screaming children, a harried receptionist, and, strangely enough, a couple of dogs. (In retrospect, I think my mind was actually conjuring a veterinarian’s office, for reasons I have not yet taken the time to consider.) Naturally, the CTA system favored me that afternoon with brilliant timing and swift service, the likes of which never would have occurred if I were headed to, say… a movie, or the zoo, or a private supermodel lingerie photo shoot. It’s almost as if They knew. The train pulled up just as I reached the platform. The devious and wretched Diversey bus glided to a halt right in front of me by the time I got back down to street level.

I arrived at the office at about 3:20. I lingered around outside the building on the sidewalk for a couple of minutes, for as much as I didn’t want to be the guy who is late for his first dental appointment, I really didn’t want to be the guy who was so unbelievably eager to be at the dentist that he showed up forty minutes early. Something like that could be misinterpreted by the office staff. They might think, Hey, this guy really likes the dentist. Look at him! He can’t wait to get in here. He’s the perfect candidate for our new and untested Extractor 3000 Automated Oral Robotic Contraption. I scanned the surrounding neighborhood for something that I could use to kill a half-hour or so. My options included a gas station, a vacant lot, a closed antique store, and a wireless phone service center. I briefly considered heading over to the gas station to grab a snack, but I had just brushed my teeth before leaving work and didn’t want to spoil the illusion I hoped I had created, like a thin coat of varnish over termite-infested wood. It was quite cold outside, and I also didn’t want to be the person who loitered around the front of a dentist office as if he was waiting in fear for a while before he headed inside. My mental pool was swimming with a collection of doppelgangers that I did not want to be. Aw, screw it. I went inside.

There was nobody there. The waiting room was completely empty. No kids, no parents, so miserable looking middle-aged man with one swollen and red cheek with cartoon stars and exclamation points hovering above it. The receptionist told me to have a seat. There were several to choose from, so I took one nearest the window. Jeopardy was on the television, but the reception wasn’t so great, and so the sound would fade into static sporadically, but always when somebody was giving the answer. It was almost as if It knew. You’d be amazed how absolutely not fun it is to watch Jeopardy when you don’t get confirmation of the answers. Why I believe the answer … Ah, ah, ah, I mean the Question… to that is Ghengis Khan. Pretty sure. Ghengis Khan. Ah, that guy is ringing in. He sure looks like he knows it. Ah, the damn static! I can’t read lips! Did he say Genghis Khan or Garbage Can? George Clooney? Could the answer actually be George Clooney? Dammit? Am I smart or not? Smart or not!!! I’ll never know. My goodness, what a bitter and hollow experience this is. Did Alex shave his moustache?

I sat quietly for a while until I spotted a book on the table across the way. I believe it was called Why You Shouldn’t Hate Your Dentist Even Though He Brings Excruciating Pain, or something like that. I flipped through and studied several wonderful full-color photographs and diagrams of all the terrible things that happened when people didn’t visit the dentist twice a year. Every year. Always. You Must Visit The Dentist. Or You Will Die. Your Rotten Teeth Will Kill You. Only The Dentist Can Save You From A Horrible And Painful Death By Tooth Decay. Look at these pictures. Sally here skipped her dentist appointment once so that she could go to her sister’s wedding. She was found dead two weeks later of plaque-related complications. Do Not Be Sally. Root Canals. Impacted Molars. Gingivitis. Bleeding Gums. Crowns. Fillings. Filings. Extractions. It was all there. All extremely well photographed.

Eventually, a man opened the door separating the waiting room from where all the actual work gets done. He was apparently the patient scheduled before me, finished up. I was pleased to note that he looked normal. Nothing was swollen and he appeared relatively pain free. Well, he did seem to have a slight limp and his hair was kind of messed up, but I assured myself that these things were not related.

It was my turn.

A lady led me down the hall to one of the examination rooms. She informed me that since I hadn’t been to the dentist for such a long time, she was going to have to give me a stern spanking. Actually, no, she told me that they were going to take a series of X-rays of my teeth. Cool. No problem. She brought in one of those wonderful lead aprons that I vaguely remembered from the last time I found myself being bombarded with radiation by some woman I just met. She laid it carefully over my entire body, and I considered the implications. She was preparing to take this bizarre cannon-like contraption on a giant swivel arm and fire it directly at my head about fifteen times in a row, but wanted to make sure that no stray beams came in contact with any other part of my body. Yes, we try to make sure that any mutations or other extremely harmful side-effects are fully contained to your head only. Thanks for that. You make sure that this thing is set up perfectly, just a couple of inches from my skull and then you won’t even stand in the same room! I especially liked it when she said, “You know, this one didn’t turn out so well. It looks blurry. We’ll have to do that one again.” Blurry!! Is it blurry, or have the mutations already begun? Does my face look blurry when you look at it? Whaddya mean it looks the same as when I got here? What is that supposed to mean?

They did have a pretty cool setup, however, in that as soon as the x-ray was scanned, it popped up on a video screen that hung over the chair. Photo after photo of the inside of my mouth flew past – the most boring vacation slide show ever. Oh, look. Here’s that bicuspid we liked so much. You remember the bicuspid, don’t you, Phyllis? I watched each little snapshot as it appeared, having no idea what I was looking for. I didn’t see any huge black spots anywhere, no red lights or klaxons were going off. The X-Ray Technician lady had not yet gasped and recoiled in horror. I took these all to be encouraging signs.

When she had finished strafing my skull with invisible yet deadly waves of atomic particles, she sat and perused the results for a while. Abruptly, she stood and said that the dentist would be in to see me shortly. Was there a hint of concern in her voice? Was she hiding something terrible from me? Had her trained eyes spied something in the pictures? After she left, I sat and remembered my mother telling me when I was young that I needed to take really good care of my teeth. Not necessarily to promote a lifetime of good chewing or to avoid unnecessary troubles later on, but rather because the orthodontic work required to transform my mouth from a disgusting jumble of loose floor tiles into something resembling order had cost a small fortune. And here I was finally, fifteen years later, after ignoring my poor mother’s advice, fidgeting nervously in a chair waiting for some enraged tooth-care professional to storm in with a handful of sharp metal objects and berate me before stabbing me repeatedly below the gum line until I confessed my evil deeds.

He walked in, saying something like, “So Jennifer tells me that you haven’t been to the dentist in about two months.” I sighed. Any hope I had that 21st century dentists had developed a sense of humor, or at least stopped freakin’ trying, were immediately dashed. He continued, “Well, I really wanted to come in here to yell at you.”

Go ahead, I thought. I deserve it. Unleash your wrath!!

“But, uh, well, your teeth look really good.”

Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. Please be gentle, doc—

Huh?

Yeah. That’s right. No cavities. Healthy roots. No major concerns.

“You should probably be flossing more,” he noted.

That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me? Floss more? Floss more?!!

That’s what they told me ten freaking years ago!! Are you telling me that a man can totally ignore all conventional wisdom and avoid going to the dentist for an entire decade, flossing approximately 1.7 times per year with no ill effects? What about the books? The full-color pictures? What about the TV commercials and the ADA and the 4 out of 5 dentists and the plaque and the tartar and… Dammit, what does this all mean?

Naturally, I’ve considered a few possibilities.

Maybe I hadn’t actually gone to a real dentist. After all, I just picked him off a list. Granted, it was a listed provided by 1800dentist.com, and if you cannot trust 1-800-DENTIST, then, by God, who can you trust? But maybe it was all just a clever ruse. Perhaps I was an unwilling and unwitting participant in some sort of bizarre radiation research. Maybe they were running some sort of half-assed insurance scam. And, of course, maybe the dentist was a malicious alien who carefully implanted some sort of tracking device in my mouth under the guise of “removing tartar”. This would certainly explain the unusual promptness and convenience of the Chicago Transit system (whose extra-terrestrial connections I have often referred to here.)

Any of these scenarios would be preferable to what I have come to suspect is the awful truth.

They have all been lying to us. Dentists, for their own selfish reasons, have been overstating the importance of regular checkups. This is clearly a large conspiracy that goes deeper than we can possibly fathom. Toothpaste and mouthwash manufacturers, oral surgeons, members of Congress… even (gasp!) our own mothers, who blindly scheduled regular appointments for us for years when we would not or could not think for ourselves… Nobody gets away clean and/or minty fresh on this one. What is at the bottom of all this? Only time will tell. But I’m sure it’s something terrible. Something sinister. Something eeeeeevilllllllllll…

Or maybe I’m just a really good brusher.