My Visit to the Modern Torture Chambers

I finally had a dentist appointment today, which is my first since high school. I know that's bad but now that I have dental insurance I have no excuse.

The dental hygenist led me back to the room after I filled out the mountain of paperwork and got me ready for my check up. I leaned back in the nice comfortable chair and looked and the flat panel TV on the ceiling that was showing only a picture of some pink flowers on it; too bad- I wanted to watch CSI or something while I was getting tortured. I guess it could have been worse; they could have made me watch reruns of "The Nanny" with the volume turned way up. Now THAT would have been torture!

Dentist office's have come a long way since high school. I think my last dentist had a picture of a puppy or a kitten on his ceiling.

I didn't have much time to contemplate on the TV screen because the hygenist got right to work. It was at that moment that I remembered why people hate dentist office visits. She said my teeth didn't look too bad for 7 years without a cleaning but she sure did a lot of scraping. The worst part was I could never tell when she was in the room when she wasn't scraping because I was reclined in the chair. I would go 2-3 minutes without seeing or hearing her and just as I thought it was safe to let go of that gas I'd been holding she would pop back into my line of vision and start digging again.

Four hours later ( I think) when she was done, the muscles around my mouth were so sore that I couldn't close my mouth and I wasn't sure if I had teeth left. There was no mirror in the room, but if there had been I'm sure I had blood all over my face.

The dentist came in and glanced at my teeth; seeing nothing greatly amiss, he took a quick look at mu X-rays before leaving the room. That was where the problem was. Apparently my two upper cuspids are both baby teeth and the adult teeth above them are perfectly poised to come in when the baby ones fall out. Apparently my dental development gland fell asleep on the job 11 years ago and hasn't gotten back to work yet. You can't see the other teeth or anything and they didn't bother me until today. The dentist told me that if he had only looked at my xray and hadn't seen me, he would have guessed that I was 12 or 13. Of course, if he spent more time with me he really may have started to think that.

We'll see what the orthodontist has to say about my funky teeth. I think they're fine the way they are. Can you imagine how stupid I will look with two teeth missing at the same time? Don't answer that.

Come to think of it, I may just blend right in with some of the people around here.

After all that the dentist office gave me a free toothbrush and some free floss. How cheap is that? They couldn't even give out a little candy or anything.