Son, Be a Dentist

I don't like going to the dentist. The sound of the pick scraping against my teeth makes me shudder. The noise from the drill gives me goosebumps. The smell of tooth being eroded quickly and mechanically makes me want to gag. And should they start to drill before I'm fully numb, which actually happens almost every time I have a filling, I am quite likely to screech, flail, and weep like a small child.

By the way, can anyone tell me why every dentist says, "OK, we're almost done here" a full 30 minutes before they actually let you up from the chair? Do they teach that in every dental school in the nation? Every time I hear it, it gives me a little feeling of hopelessness. Like maybe I will be stuck in the dentist chair for the rest of my life. Honestly. If I go to Hell, it will be a dentist chair. Forever.

Today was unique though. For the first time in the history of my poorly enameled teeth (and trust me, that's been a lot of dental work over the past 30 years!), I did not lay in the chair begging with a divine Heavenly Power to rescue me from the Hell. Instead, I resigned myself to the torture. Today's torture was in the form of feeling like small pointy instruments were poking down through the tooth and out the flesh of my chin. Did I mention that the pain radiated both up into my nose and down my neck at the same time? That was after 2-3 shots of anesthetic. It was at that point that I realized I both asked him to torture me by encouraging him to complete the root canal today, and I paid for the privilege. To the tune of $500, the remainder of which was billed to insurance.

And it was then that it occurred to me that at $1100 an hour, I could really enjoy watching people suffer. Maybe I should go to dental school.