Tooth Torture

So I had to go to the dentist yesterday. I really wasn't looking forward to it. Actually, I can't think of anyone who enjoys going to the dentist, for one very good reason: Dentists are evil. In fact, the word dentist comes from the Old English words dent, meaning "one who enjoys" and ist, meaning "torturing you". In a survey conducted by the very prestigious Group That Conducts Surveys, 100% of dentists admitted that, had they lived in the Middle Ages, their preferred profession would have been "torturer or executioner". (Actually, only 98% said that. The other 2% said that they would prefer to be goatherds, but their answers were disallowed due to being stupid.) Dentists always tell you that they don't mean to hurt you, but they are lying.

I have to admit, as a child I didn't really mind the dentist. I would go over there every six months, get praised for my good brushing skills, get my teeth scrapped, and leave. Nothing traumatic about it. When I was 8, I had four teeth pulled, but aside from drooling all over myself when I tried to drink because the Novocaine hadn't worn off yet, that wasn't bad.

No, my dentist troubles did not start until I was a teenager. Though I had been told that I didn't really need braces, my parents decided that I should get them anyway, since they were going to be free (thanks for nothing, military benefits!). I was already 13 at this point, and several of my friends had braces, so I already knew that they would be pretty horrible. Before they could put them on, the dentists wanted to wait until all my adult teeth had come in and I had stopped growing. I would go over there every few months and they would x-ray my hand to see if the bones had fused yet. That didn't happen until after my 14th birthday, so I didn't get my braces until I was a freshman in high school, when all my friends were getting theirs taken off. I wore those horrible torturous pieces of steel glued to my teeth until nearly my 19th birthday. And that was only the beginning.

If you've never had braces, just imagine having various bits of metal in your mouth, constantly scraping at the insides of your lips and cheeks. Every time you accidentally get hit in the face playing sports or wrestling with your brothers, you cut your mouth open and end up sucking your own blood. In fact, I think one of the prerequisites for being a vampire would be to have braces when you're a kid. There are sharp pieces of wire poking into you, and they give you these little pieces of wax to use to stick to the wires to cushion them, but then you end up swallowing the wax. From age 14 to 18, my diet was probably at least 30% wax. The rest of my diet was compose of popcorn, which I wasn't supposed to eat because it might break my braces, and sandwiches, from which the bread would get into the little spaces between the braces and my teeth and make me look like a hillbilly who didn't own a toothbrush.

Of course, there were other horrors. Like that horrible pink goo that they use to mold your teeth. They tell you, "This might be a little uncomfortable," but that is only if your definition of "uncomfortable" is "finding out what waterboarding feels like". That stuff practically oozes its way down your windpipe and you feel like you are asphyxiating and all you really want to do is throw up but if you do that, you'll die for sure. Or there was the time that one of the metal bands in my mouth came loose on the weekend, and the dentist's office was closed so I couldn't get it reattached, and it really hurt, and then I was at the PX with my parents and we ran into the dentist and my parents told him what had happened. So I had to open my mouth and stand there with it wide open, right there in the middle of the PX, which was filled with people I knew, while the dentist poked around in my mouth with his gloveless hands. Talk about embarrassment. And of course, there was the fact that every single teenage makeout session was accompanied by, "Ow, your braces just poked me!"

So by the time I was done with my braces (and actually, I never really got done with braces, since I still have a piece of metal cemented to the back of my teeth, and always will) I really didn't like dentists anymore. But I did not yet truly hate them, not in the way that I soon would, after the incident known as Having One's Wisdom Teeth Removed...dundunDUN.

I was 19 when I got my wisdom teeth out. This was muuuuch worse than just pulling teeth. They actually had to cut my gums open to extract the teeth. And, to make things much worse, they didn't put me to sleep. The dentist shot me up with tons of Novocaine, but I was still awake and I could still feel what they were doing. Never having undergone any kind of surgical procedure (or even a broken bone, or anything), I was a total wreck, very nervous, and it reeeeally hurt. And then of course there was the aftermath: you can't brush your teeth for days, your mouth is full of blood and stitches, you're all doped up on Percocet and can't eat anything but mashed potatoes and baby food...it's horrible. So after that, I did not go to the dentist again for about 10 years.

A few years ago, I decided that I didn't want to end up being toothless by age 40, so I started going to the dentist again. Of course, I had four cavities and getting them filled was no picnic. But almost worse than that is the twice yearly check up. They put you in that chair and then lay it down so much that you are almost bent over backwards, and then make you put on flimsy plastic glasses that probably have leprosy on them from the previous patients. On the ceiling above, there is always some kind of poster with a pretty picture, advising you to relax. That's like asking someone who was being questioned by the Spanish Inquisition to relax; it's not happening. Then they shine that light in your eyes that makes you feel like you are staring into the sun. And then, they begin to torture you. They yank on your teeth, stab you in the gum with a sharp piece of metal, spray water all over your face until you feel like you are drowning, and then lecture you about not flossing. And then they wonder why people never want to go back. Evil, I tell you! Evil.

Fucking dentists.