My dental adventures

I made it through the wilderness
Somehow I made it through...

Since coming here, I've been complimented many times on my name. I always say, "Cheers, I'll tell my mum." Cos, really, like I had anything to do with. Recently, I've been complimented on something else: my teeth. Actually, I say complimented, but I don't know if you can really call it that. For example, I'm sitting in the middle of a really heavy conference with a parent, upset that she thinks her kid has dyslexia. I'm doing my part to reassure her. "Sorry," she says, "but you have the whitest teeth I've ever seen." I don't think I was complimented so much as she was startled into blurting this out. Let me assure you, it was embarrassment, not pride I was feeling.

Frankly, it's beginning to annoy me. I can't explain the teeth. That's just how they are, people. I'd like to say it's that I've done something special, but clearly I haven't. Cos my dentist came to me a couple of months ago saying I needed seven fillings. Seven fillings? Is that actually possible? Boy was shocked. "It's so weird, cos your teeth... they look so... perfect."

She said she would fit me into two sessions. Until she realised what I drill-phobic I was and kindly suggested we split the last session into two. The thing is, I've never been drilled and filled in such a way. The drill was rattling in the worse way in my ear. I was desperate for it to stop and she just wouldn't. Maybe it was rattling some sense into me. My teeth were decayed in some serious way and that fact started to dawn on me. This was it. There was nothing I could do to stop her. If only I had just been a bit more sensible. How I had fucked things up! I mean, who even needs seven fillings at one time? And then I began to cry. The pain had something to do with it, but mostly I was overwhelmed into tears by my own hubris ("What? Brush my teeth? Why? I'll have beautiful teeth forever!") and foolishness.

My last appointment was this past Friday. She was clearly disturbed by the meltdown I had had during my last appointment, but I insisted that we finished. There was no way I was going to come back and let that woman put those drills in my mouth again. When I had arrived at my appointment, I was greeted at reception with "Oh, the one with the beautiful name." Yeh, beautiful name, but fucked-up, decayed grill.