Dentist

One thinks that, on a glorious Sunday off (note, my job gives me Mondays and Tuesdays off; work with me...) on a long weekend (I took an extra day for overtime worked; I can do that), one can sleep in, think happy thoughts, and consider breakfast in an idle fashion. Then the phone rings. Dentist office. " Good morning! (cheery voice, Glad to be alive voice: uh huh, kill main destroy...) you're on our ASAP list; are you available for your extraction at 1.30 pm?

Tooth extraction, sure, be right down. Wisdom tooth, too. Should be fun! I'd have to wait for a month, otherwise. May as well go get this done.

I have an hour to make this trip. I show up after going to the wrong office, wasting half an hour in transit, and twenty bucks in cab fare. I get shown in to the office, and into the chair. There's a large tray, with a collection of vicious looking implements, and a cheery dentist. One who thinks things are just fine with the world. Here we go.

I won't go into detail as to the noise of the drill, or the grinding sound of the pliers (they DO use some kind of pliers, I noticed). Or the one time the dentist went '' OOPS!!", never a good sign from a qualified practitioner of orthodontia. Suffice it to say that I spent an hour and a half watching 'No fear' with that Osbourne kid on the ceiling television, repeatedly humming a Steppenwolf song, much to the delight of the assistant. ''You're such a GREAT patient!" Uh huh.

All this, while my head and jaw is jerked repeatedly back and forth, clamps grind into my tooth, instruments poke and prod my gums (not that I can feel it; not until later), and the dentist continually says ''Are you okay? Are you okay?" At the end, they had to leave a small bit of root in the gum, as it was jammed up against another tooth. This, they said, SHOULD be absorbed into the bone. Good thing, as they had to take out a chunk of jaw to remove the impacted tooth.

I've never had so much fun!!! Really! Dentists are not the horror for me that they are for some people. I think it's downright neato, when they go in for things like extractions or fillings. And I got left with a gaping hole in my gums, which is sort of neato, too. I got a full, and ongoing, description of what they were doing in there, which I find fascinating.

I even got to keep the tooth.