Humor by John Christmann
Dental Hijinks
There is nothing funny about dentists. Nothing. Oh sure, we can poke fun at their floss-happy assistants and the diplomas from obscure dental schools that hang on their walls, and maybe even the big plastic toothbrush they use to demonstrate how to brush properly, but unless the idea of having power tools in your mouth makes you giggle, you are not likely to leave the dentist’s office with a pleasing smile. Talk about irony.
So you can imagine how shocked I was to have an amusing dream about having my two front teeth pulled the other night. In it, I was peering over the shoulder of my dentist, Elmer Fudd D.D.S., as he absently prepared to work on a patient who, unbeknownst to him, had just bolted from the chair in a vapor trail.
“Ehh, what’s up, Doc?” I said. I was munching a carrot.
“Shhh!” he commanded, holding his stubby finger before his lips, “I am twying to pull the tooth of this cwazy wabbit.”
Meanwhile, his dental assistant, Porky Pig, was twirling around helplessly on a swivel stool. “Help, help,” he squealed, “I’ve been t-t-t-tied up in ebede-ebede-ebede dental floss!”
Realizing I was no longer in the chair, Elmer jerked around to face me, his bushy eyebrows slanted down toward his bulbous nose. “Why you . . .” he started, but before he could finish I shoved a Q-tip in his mouth and swabbed his first bicuspids and lateral incisors with bubblegum-flavored ACME super glue. “Now, bite.” I told him in a sing song voice. And then I pulled out an enormous yellow jack hammer and switched it on. It was 6:30 and the alarm was ringing harshly in my ear. I woke up smiling.
I am not a vicious man. Nor am I a vindictive man—although once I folded a parking ticket into a paper airplane and launched it square into the windshield of a passing meter maid. But it is clear, even to me, that I have some unresolved issues with dentists. But then again, maybe this is completely understandable. Let me explain.
As dentists go, ours is really a very nice guy. Everyone calls him Dr. K. I joke that it is short for Kevorkian, but is really short for another long name which I write on the check every time I see him. On a routine visit to have my daughter’s teeth cleaned and X-rayed, Dr. K. informed me that she needed to have one of her baby teeth removed. The tooth, which was discolored, had sustained some nerve damage after a collision with our coffee table years earlier, an event for which I was assigned full blame on the basis that I was not in the room to prevent it. Doctor K. explained that removing the baby tooth would ensure that the underlying permanent tooth would grow in strong and healthy. He picked up a big plastic tooth in his office and pointed at the roots which I imagined were still embedded firmly in her jawbone.
I gulped. “Can’t we just paint it?” I asked.
I consider myself lucky. It has been a long, long time since I underwent any sort of traumatic dental work. I have not had a cavity since I was a kid, and I have successfully avoided that two word procedure that scares even the likes of Jack Bauer, Chuck Norris, and, evidently, Austin Powers—root canal. But the memories of a few dismal experiences in the dentist chair still linger in my mind. So when I reluctantly took my daughter in to have her tooth pulled, I was mortified to discover that the barbaric tools I recall from my distant youth have changed very little. It seems even technology is afraid to go to the dentist.
Dr. K. was friendly to us both, and invited me to sit with my daughter during the procedure, which he assured was quick and painless. The room was bright and cheery, and gaily filled with cartoon lithographs on the wall. He explained that he would first swab some good tasting medicine in the back of her jaw, and then “pinch” her a little bit with a needle to make her mouth feel comfortable before he removed the bad tooth. “With this,” said Dr. K. He held up a thin metal rod the size of pencil. On one end was a harmless little yellow plastic cover marked with a happy face. On the other end was a bunch of wires and retractable arms that angulated ominously into the core of a nuclear reactor controlled by Dr. K.’s duplicitous feet. My daughter looked on in complete trust, while I looked on in complete horror.
“Any questions?” asked Dr. K. without waiting for an answer. “OK, good!” And then he pulled the mask in front of his face, maneuvered the high intensity overhead light to his liking, and slipped on his rubber gloves while his happy assistant hung a gurgling suction tube from my daughter’s cheek, as if her mouth was nothing more than a coffee cup holder. My stomach instantly turned to knots and I grew light headed knowing what was coming.
“Let’s begin,” he said. I grasped my daughter’s hand and tears started to well up in her eyes. I could only imagine that she would have divulged every military secret known to man to get out of that chair. But she couldn’t talk. Her mouth was stuffed with cotton.
“It’s OK sweetie.” I told her, squeezing her cold, trembling hand. It was a hollow and empty kind of reassurance. After all, I was supposed to protect her. But there I was sitting at her side knowing full well that a man wearing a mask was about to drive a forklift into her mouth and forcibly remove her tooth. And I was paying him to do it.
At that moment, I was embarrassed to call myself a father.
Her muffled cries emerged through the cotton, but I could still make out the words: “Stop it Daddy, pleeeeeease!” she sobbed.
“It will be over soon,” I promised, gripping her hand tighter.
“Noooo,” she sobbed. “My hand. You are squeezing it too hard!”
And then Dr. K. pulled a large metallic syringe the size of the Empire State Building from behind his back. I think this was the moment when I passed out.
I am reclining in a dental office decorated in primary colors. Across the room Elmer Fudd, D.D.S., is standing in a white lab coat holding a large syringe. I can’t move; my bottom is numb because he has just injected it with Novocain. I watch him balance a large safe on the window sill. The safe is attached to a length of dental floss. The other end is attached to my front tooth. “This will only hurt a wittle,” he says. Then with his stubby forefinger he pushes the safe out the window.
As the floss rapidly uncoils Dr. Fudd hands me a giant toothbrush. “Don’t forget to bwush,” he sings. And then the floss pulls tight under the weight of the plummeting safe. As luck would have it, my tooth is quite healthy and it doesn’t come out. Instead I am jerked swiftly out the one hundred and fourth floor window of the ACME Dental and Life Building. For a brief second I run helplessly in the air, then vanish downward in a puff of smoke.
Sometime before I hit the ground I came to. I found myself reclining in a dental office decorated in primary colors. On the far wall was a lithograph of Elmer Fudd wearing a dental mask, and another of Bugs Bunny sporting a long white bandage tied up and over his head with a big knot. My head hurt and my cheek felt numb, like it was full of felt and covered in drool. From under the high intensity light suspended above me a shadow emerged. It was a man with a mask over his mouth. It must be Yosemite Sam, I remember thinking.
But it was not Yosemite Sam. It was only our friendly family dentist, Dr. Kevorkian. By his side on the swivel chair was my daughter. She was holding my hand. Her touch was soft and warm and reassuring, and I felt safe.
“It’s OK, Daddy,” she said, patting my hand. “You fell off the chair while Dr. K. was fixing my smile!”
Then she held up a little red box and shook it so it rattled. “My tooth!” she exclaimed proudly, “and it didn’t hurt a bit!” A smile crept across her face. It was big and wide and full of beautiful gaps where white healthy teeth were growing. It was the kind of smile that would give me heartburn when the boys grew old enough to notice.
Dr. K. spoke. His face showed genuine worry and concern for my well being.
“While you were out in the chair I took the opportunity to look at your teeth,” he told me earnestly. “That front one was pretty decayed, so I removed it.”
The blood drained from my face and I quickly traced my tongue over what was left of my two front teeth. But they were both there. My daughter started to laugh out loud. Dr. K. was holding a large plastic tooth in his hands. “You can leave this for the tooth fairy,” he chuckled. And then added in a sing song voice, “Oh, and don’t forget to brush!”
So forgive me if one night I have an amusing dream about having my teeth pulled. Because like I said, Doc, there is nothing funny about dentists. Nothing.
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