A Mouthful of Trouble
My sister Jennifer, at age 36, has never had a single filling. While she's flashing a flawless grin somewhere, my own teeth are chipping like plates from the dollar store. Like many, she's always equated a need for fillings with moral failure. Maybe she's right, or maybe we all end up in dental hell, one way or another.
Twenty years ago, she was a caged beast. Despite a tremendous Austin Powers overbite, the dental angel of death passed me by, and I avoided the clutches of Dr. Hurt(yes, that really was his name), the town's resident orthodontist. For several years, Jennifer and my brother Rich ran the glittering gauntlet of dentistry, while I remained blissfully unaware of the horrors of malocclusion.
I'm the third of three children born within a span of 33 months. Because of our close proximity in age, our mother was frequently mediating disputes both petty and profound. Now that my sister Jennifer is the mother of two daughters, she considers my mother's very survival an awe-inspiring accomplishment. As the runt of the litter, my survival was also not a foregone conclusion; I was frequently goaded into all sorts of misadventures-many of them involving public nudity--in attempts to curry the favour of the older kids. They weren't cruel; I never faced swirlies, beatings, or wedgies, but my gullible nature and desire to please was a source of endless entertainment. I suppose this was the justification for my schadenfreude; my grinning and gloating from the backseat of our orange plymouth colt station wagon as they truged in to yet another appointment with the dreaded Dr. Hurt. I recall now, above my hearty helping of crow, how I used to taunt them at the dinner table:
"Looks like you strained some broccoli there, metal mouth".
"Nice retainer, Frankenstein--did the doctor tighten your neck bolts too?"
It's funny how these things come back to haunt you. Today, I discoved that the root canal I had last spring didn't take. Not only wasn't the hole drilled correctly, but the x-ray revealed that the previous dentist had even left the tip of a tool in my tooth. Now I have an appointment with a specialist. I can only assume that this is the branch of dentisty reserved for the most sadistic of practitioners. I can't confirm it, but I've heard rumours of leather straps, assless chaps, and satanic rituals involving blood sacrifice. You don't really believe they just flush all the blood and saliva they suction out of your mouth down the drain, do you?
Twenty years ago, she was a caged beast. Despite a tremendous Austin Powers overbite, the dental angel of death passed me by, and I avoided the clutches of Dr. Hurt(yes, that really was his name), the town's resident orthodontist. For several years, Jennifer and my brother Rich ran the glittering gauntlet of dentistry, while I remained blissfully unaware of the horrors of malocclusion.
I'm the third of three children born within a span of 33 months. Because of our close proximity in age, our mother was frequently mediating disputes both petty and profound. Now that my sister Jennifer is the mother of two daughters, she considers my mother's very survival an awe-inspiring accomplishment. As the runt of the litter, my survival was also not a foregone conclusion; I was frequently goaded into all sorts of misadventures-many of them involving public nudity--in attempts to curry the favour of the older kids. They weren't cruel; I never faced swirlies, beatings, or wedgies, but my gullible nature and desire to please was a source of endless entertainment. I suppose this was the justification for my schadenfreude; my grinning and gloating from the backseat of our orange plymouth colt station wagon as they truged in to yet another appointment with the dreaded Dr. Hurt. I recall now, above my hearty helping of crow, how I used to taunt them at the dinner table:
"Looks like you strained some broccoli there, metal mouth".
"Nice retainer, Frankenstein--did the doctor tighten your neck bolts too?"
It's funny how these things come back to haunt you. Today, I discoved that the root canal I had last spring didn't take. Not only wasn't the hole drilled correctly, but the x-ray revealed that the previous dentist had even left the tip of a tool in my tooth. Now I have an appointment with a specialist. I can only assume that this is the branch of dentisty reserved for the most sadistic of practitioners. I can't confirm it, but I've heard rumours of leather straps, assless chaps, and satanic rituals involving blood sacrifice. You don't really believe they just flush all the blood and saliva they suction out of your mouth down the drain, do you?
