I phoned a friend last week to ask her who her dentist was.
It’s not that she’s had anything startling done with her teeth, but I’ve heard her talk about her dentist before and she does have a friend who works as a dental assistant. That and the fact that she doesn’t remotely resemble Nanny McPhee makes her an expert in my mind.
She told me the name of her dentist and threw in that he was handsome too. Hmm, I thought, this is the new dentist for me.
I made an appointment (actually an emergency appointment, which is never a good time to find a new dentist) and I forgot to specify the name of her dentist, which I had forgotten in the time between the telling and the phoning.
Truthfully, I was grateful to get an appointment at all that day, given I was a new patient and the back tooth was proving to be quite the headache.
The dentist I was booked with proved to be really thorough, and coincidentally also pretty handsome. But more importantly he knew his stuff and he was wearing an interesting pair of dental goggly eye glasses.
I have used the same dentist now for about 35 years and I am very familiar with his face, most particularly his eyebrows and his eyes which is what I look at while he drills and chats, drills and chats, and asks questions he knows I can never answer.
So these glasses created a nice diversion and something new to ponder.
As it turns out, the glasses were moot as soon as I saw that this surgery had a television on the ceiling. It was tuned to a wildlife show, which was great for a while. But when I started seeing lions dripping blood as they hopped into their gazelle dinner, I didn’t feel it was conducive to remaining calm while my own mouth had the potential to also drip blood (well, there might be some small exaggeration there).
The dental assistant changed the channel. The world of dolphins seemed a safe bet. And so my new dentist focussed his goggly glasses to the task and drilled and chatted, drilled and chatted.
But just as he got to the climax of the drilling session, my dolphin friends were attacked. I knew this wasn’t good, mainly through the video itself, but also by the subtitles which said ‘scary music’.
My heartbeat accelerated, the drill persisted and the dolphins and I came out the other side in a safe haven.
I’m going back for the second round of what is now a crown in a few weeks.
I think I might ask if they have any programs about kittens to watch.
