A Wee Ode to a Dental Provider, or What? No Gas This Time?

I sometimes watch their eyes.

There’s so little else to look at.

Why is that?

I raise a hand, and she removes the plaque-picker – I believe that’s the technical term – from my teeth.

“A mobile would look nice up here on the ceiling, maybe something made out of extracted teeth and the fingernails you pry from the chair arms.”

She looks at me kindly, blinks a bit. 

“Too much?” I say.

“Mmm,” she says.  “Open, please.”

I open my mouth, go back to staring up, staring over, staring through the clear, still blue/green of her eyes.

She returns to scraping.

I have a small mouth and all of my teeth, one of whom has struck out on his own.  Lebensraum, I believe the ungrateful little wretch shouted as he left the line-up.

“But Adolph,” I said to Incisor P25, “what did I ever do to you to make you want to leave?”

Still, Adolph’s departure from the bottom row array has left me with a distinctive bite mark, one I regularly assure my friends I will leave all over the place should I be kidnapped or otherwise molested.

“Is Pearl drunk?” one whispers to another.  “She’s talking about biting stuff again.”

And so I found myself at the dentist the other day, getting P25 and all the other little buggers cleaned and polished, a bi-annual checking for the slow creep of gingivitis and other conditions with foreboding and expensive-sounding names.

The hygienist is a lovely woman.  Aside from the impressive eyes, she has been patient with my questions.

“Are tori fairly common?”  Yes.

“Is there an instance where plaque is actually a good thing?”  No. 

“When hygienists are in school, do they practice cleaning teeth on each other?”  Yes.

“Why,” I ask her at one point, “am I a little afraid of when you go at my teeth from the cheek side, but not from the tongue side?”

She doesn’t even have to think.  “Aggressive brushing,” she says.

I frown.  “Well maybe the little bastages had it comin’ to ‘em,” I say ominously. 

She laughs.  “You should get an electric toothbrush,” she says.  “It will keep you from brushing hard and it will help immensely with the plaque.”

“Really?”  I frown again.  “I’ve never had an electric toothbrush,” I say.

“Never?”

I laugh.  “I saw one in a store once.”

She laughs.

“I’ve been using tiny scrubby bits fallen from storm-damaged pine trees,” I say, “flossing with bits of thread I find hanging off my shirts.  Is that wrong?”

Dr. Doroschak enters the room as we are amusing ourselves.

“I hope you’ve been careful about what you say,” he says to her, smiling.  “You realize she’s a writer, don’t you?”

The dental hygienist looks at me suspiciously.  “Are you going to write about me?”

“I promise to only say nice things,” I say. 

She smiles.  "I appreciate it," she says.