Dentist

Last night I had a dream that Russell Howard was my dentist. And that upon visiting him, he went nowhere near my mouth, but instead gave me an injection to relieve my back pain. If only my real dentist could provide such a useful service.

I can’t go any further without having to sound massively gloaty and self-satisfied. About something that is in no way due to my own efforts or talent, but simply a matter of genetic good fortune on my part. I have perfect teeth. Completely straight, no fillings, and no past extractions. So having wasted God-knows-how-many-hours of my life visiting the dentist seems criminally extravagant.

Admittedly, these days I only go for a check-up every nine months, and the dentist spends two minutes, at the most, having a perfunctory prod, and a look to check that I haven’t got mouth cancer. But I resent it. Because the fact that I continue with this time-wasting charade strikes at my vanity. I am hopelessly cavalier in my approach to preventative medicine. I tend to presume an early death to be pretty inevitable, so, hey. Surprise me, Reaper. But, the only explanation for my continuing to waste time and money on preventative dentistry, is because I don’t want to risk ending up with gum disease. A bit of lung cancer or liver cirrhosis, and I’ll think “Well, I got what I deserved. Night everyone.” But, I sure as hell don’t want to die toothless. As my coffin sallies forth on its final fiery journey, I want to it to be a fully dentified¹ me cocooned within it. I may be swollen up, yellow, and lacking half a lung, but I’ll still be able to get the tops off beer bottles, when no one else in heaven can find a bottle opener.

My discomfort at going to the dentist begins as soon as I step through the door and announce myself. I have to tell the receptionist which of the practice dentists my appointment is with. But I have an unfortunate aphasia where his name is concerned. It is only two letters different to the name of a minorly successful snooker player. Therefore, this snooker player is all that I can think of as I stand gawping at the receptionist, pulling agonised faces, and opening and closing my mouth like a manatee who’s forgotten to resurface for air until it’s almost too late.²

Once ensconced in the waiting room, the discomfort is not eased. Benches occupy three of the tiny room’s customary quota of four walls. One is forced to spend around 40 minutes studiously avoiding the gaze of 20 eyes. The more socially adept of patients evade this necessity by reading. Or, I don’t know, at least looking at printed material. But, the provision of this is limited, and a little narrow to say the least. Not only is it limited to appalling women’s magazines, but appalling women’s magazines which are pretending to be upmarket. They may advertise country house hotels, but they have Colleen Nolan on the front cover.

On my last trip to the dentist, someone had had the presence of mind to bring along a Chris Ryan book to read. Maybe in an attempt to psych themselves up for the ordeal. It’s a kind of logic, I suppose. Albeit one akin to having the waiting room television screen Marathon Man on loop.

On being called upon to enter the dentist’s lair (and from one trip to the next Ialways forget which is the correct room, so make a spectacle of myself in reception once more – and everyone knows it’s the opticians at which you’re supposed to do that), the usual procedure occurs. Sit in chair, answer dentist’s banal questions about one’s wellbeing, open mouth, and become overwhelmingly sleepy as chair pneumatically reclines and descends. There’s no time to relax though. No sooner have I opened my gob than the dentist has apparently seen all he needs to see, and I’m sent packing. All I can say is that I’m glad that I have to pay either nothing, or not a great deal for the privilege of his time and expertise.

Things were different at my old dentist’s. He practised from a lovely big old house, with a musty-smelling waiting room, filled with enough copies of The Beano to corrupt a child for life.³ The dentist himself, an elderly, time-served practitioner of tooth-proderry, used an array of fascinating tools (my current dentist seems to have one lowly pick thing), and called out a litany of “1, 2, 3 un-erupted, 4, 5, 6 okay.” This made dentistry seem more like wizardry (aided in part by my dentist’s half-moon glasses and white beard), and as a result, a lot more fun than it is these days.

But I’ll continue to go for check-ups. Because the moment I don’t, my wisdom teeth will begin to come through awkwardly. (Yes, I’m 32-years old, and I haven’t got my wisdom teeth. Go figure.) Or my years of smugness surrounding my laissez-faire tooth-care regime (which veers between completely non-existent, and massively fastidious), will finally catch up with me, leaving me in need of 10 fillings and 18 extractions all in one go. And condemned to eternity in hell: a place of limitless Kronenburg, but neither implement nor teeth with which to open it.

¹‘Dentify’ is not a word. I just thought that it should be. It put me in mind of how one is ‘identified’ by one’s dental records. The similar etymology though, is of course a pure coincidence.
²Incidentally, manatees grow new teeth continually throughout their lives, and therefore never have to go to the dentist.
³It’s occurred to me recently that Dennis the Menace was a shocking role-model for children. He played practical jokes, was disrespectful to his elders, and flouted authority – while mercilessly bullying his well-behaved, polite, studious neighbour. What the hell sort of an example is that to set?

Post Script: Sorry for being unable to make the footnotes font size more sensible, or link to them from the main text. Turns out I've forgotten everything I ever knew about HTML.