Dentists

(c) 1996 by Fred Flaxman

I've become a dental saint. I brush my teeth after every meal -- even lunch -- and floss every night before going to bed, no matter how late it is or how tired I feel. And this is how I've behaved ever since my last trip to the dentist for teeth cleaning and examination.

For me, going to the dentist is the opposite of seeing a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists help alleviate feelings of guilt; dentists instill them. You can go to your dentist feeling good about yourself, your accomplishments, your life -- and return home convinced that you will be severely punished with periodontal disease if you consistently fail to floss.

The picture he paints of your future is so bleak, purgatory looks like paradise by comparison. Bleeding gums, decaying teeth, root canal work, crowns, loosing your teeth altogether and -- worst of all -- unprecedented dental bills are certain to await those who are too busy to brush or too fastidious to floss.

And all this is almost literally drilled into you while you are confined to the dentist's chair and he picks away at your tartar-filled nooks and crevices. He has a captive audience -- you -- and a half hour or so of your undivided attention while you stare up at the ceiling with nothing better to do than to count the acoustic tiles.

"Have you been flossing?" my dentist asked on my last visit, as he asks on every visit.

"I refuse to answer on the grounds that my reply might tend to incriminate me," I retorted, hoping that the Fifth Amendment would protect me if all of a sudden the dentist's chair became, as it so often does, electrified.

But dentists know when you haven't been flossing. And when you haven't listened to their previous admonitions, they have ways of getting back at you. Dr. Smalowitz, my previous dentist, used to send in his most sadistic dental assistant to scrape at my teeth until my gums bled and I swore on my gold fillings that I would floss each day for the rest of my life. That's why Dr. Smalowitz is my previous dentist.

My current dentist is such a nice guy, I feel even more guilty when I visit him. How could I possibly present this college educated, clean cut, middle class, decent doctor of dentistry with such a dirty, plaque-infested, tartar-ridden mouth? Is he wearing thin rubber gloves because he is worried about getting AIDS, or is he just protecting himself from the filthy mouths of the great unflossed?

I've read that dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession. I can understand why. Day after day they look into cigarette-stained orifices, fill cavities, inject Novocain, and deal with screaming kids. The kids alone would drive most people mad. Their job is like pulling teeth. In fact, it is pulling teeth.

But then again, dentists charge a lot more than other people whose job it is to clean something. Garbage men, for example, remove considerably more waste twice a week than dental assistants do twice a year. And how much do they make? Or maids? Or waiters?

Still, I wouldn't want to spend eight hours a day doing what dentists have to do to make a living, no matter how good a living they make. Maybe they do charge what the traffic will bear. They deserve what they get.

Nevertheless there are a few things dentists could do to make me less likely to postpone my next appointment:

1. Install TV monitors in their ceilings and give me a choice of X-rated videos to play so that I'd have something more interesting than medical equipment and ceiling tiles to look at when I'm propped back in their chairs.

2. Learn to talk about something more exciting than gum disease.

3. Develop a cholesterol-free, non-fattening, chocolate-flavored mouthwash cleanser I could swish around once or twice a day that would accomplish everything that the most proficient brushing and flossing does now, only do it better.

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