In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Galapagos, one-million years of evolution will not give mankind better teeth. On the contrary, future humans will live only thirty years or so, roughly the same lifespan as their “mouthfuls of rotting crockery.”
But at least they’re happy, swimming in the ocean and catching fish all day. And they never have to visit the dentist.
That’s because, in one-million years, there won’t be any dentists. Oh happy day.
It was with these thoughts circling round my pain-wracked brain that I lay strapped in to the chair for my semi-annual teeth cleaning.
Vonnegut got it right with his vision of dolphin-like, fish-eating descendants of man. Who would willingly go to the dentist?
Anyway, there I was, cursing the Nordic Warrior Queen for making the appointment in the first place, while a latex-clad, face-masked, and somewhat attractive dental hygienist hovered over me.
As I stared past her shoulder to the cheesy cloud mural on the ceiling, surely designed to keep a patient calm while in excruciating pain, I wondered if this pert young lady with the steely biceps realized that I was not there for an extraction.
Tug, wrench, twist, pull. Ouch.
Almost certainly, her favorite movie must be Marathon Man. At any second, I expected her to lean down and whisper in my ear, “Is it safe?”
Maybe she was having a pedicure on the day they taught aspiring dental students that teeth are in fact attached to your jaw, and that if you pull too hard, they might come out.
Phase One was finally complete. I was feeling faint from blood loss, but at least the plaque was gone from my gumlines, the crevices between my teeth were now clean.
While she worked on me with some sort of power drill, grinding away the outer surfaces of my teeth, Kenny Loggins came on the Musak system. I’m alright, don’t nobody worry ‘bout me. You got to gimme a fight, why don’t you just let me be?
I wanted to giggle, but was in too much pain.
As she peered at me over the top of her face mask, I could tell by the glazed look in her eyes: she was in a different universe. Her mind was busy calculating pi, or thinking about the mole on her boyfriend’s back, or maybe wondering who would be on American Idol tonight.
Whatever it was, she wasn’t thinking about me, her patient.
She stuck the tube in my mouth and instructed me to spit, whereupon a little geyser of spit, blood, toothpaste, and tiny bits of flesh came spewing from my mouth. With a cute little “oops,” she tried to wipe up the mess, but succeeded only in smearing it around. By now, there was surely a clown grin of menthol-flavored white and arterial red goo covering the lower half of my face.
While the flat-screen TV hanging overhead wall played its endlessly rotating commercial showing new and unique torture methods of dental repair, the hygienist pulled out enough floss to garrote a giant.
She started in.
Several hours later, she invited me once more to spit. Offering a toothy little grin, she stripped off her latex and said the dentist would be right in. After a few minutes, Dr. Mengele came in and shook my hand, his fraternity ring glistening in the fluorescent light.
I obligingly opened my mouth so he could inspect all the damage she’d done. “Looks good,” he said, and smiled with his perfect teeth.
“See you in six months.”