Dental Entry II

Look in that mouth; do you see thousands and thousands of dollars in dental work? No? Good! Poor kid, never had a chance. He had chipped teeth, broken teeth, cavities, etc. and had to have it all repaired...just his baby teeth! We spent months fretting over how it might go in the dentist's chair for him, but found an excellent pediatric dentist. I wish I had his dentist. Every time he visits, no matter what goes on in there (parents are forbidden) he comes out happy-go-lucky.

Waiting for my own special treatment, I felt even more guilty about my son's poor teeth. I resolved to make dental hygiene our top priority, to make it even more a family fun activity than wrestling or playing Ninja Turtles. Then again, as I argued with my wife in the first place, "Hey, they're only baby teeth."

I'm thinking, maybe Jax will be lucky and his real teeth won't get so corrupted. He gets a second chance. Wouldn't it be great if we went through teeth like a snake does skins? Every few years, maybe, we'd lose teeth and new ones would come in. Think of the repercussions though. Colgate and Crest would be out of business, let alone all those in the broader dental industry. People would say, "what the hell, why whiten my these teeth when I'm getting my new choppers next year. I can feel them coming in already." Imagine how funny it would be to see movie stars and corporate executives missing front teeth now and then. How would it change the stereotype of "toothless trailer trash?" I wonder if our culture is so vain that someone would come out with temporary false teeth, individual units which would fill the gap while the new ones emerged...or would it become part of our pop culture. Maybe people would become better whistlers, better at spitting water through tooth gaps...

Dentists are Blue Collar

When you really think about it, what distinguishes blue/white collar? People who work in demanding physical fields with their hands--blue collar. People who work in unpleasant environments--blue collar. People who use power tools on the job--blue collar. Dentists use pliers to wrench rotten teeth from one's head. They grind teeth down, etc. with power tools, then use bondo to affix repair pieces--glorified body shop work. This epiphany came to me as the dentist used some power tool to sculpt a filling. The tooth began to get hot. I could smell it. The tool reminded me of a rotary disk sander I used when I worked in a body shop, and how I would use it to attempt to remold a botched bondo job rather than going to get a more aggressive grinder. The smell was the same--hot bondo. I opened my eyes, something I don't do from the reception desk on, typically, and saw my dentist had on a full-face plastic visor, too...not unlike ones I've worn doing body work, etc. Last year when I visited, I peeked only once, when he had a knee on my chest and he was grunting and wrenching above me. The dental assistant was holding my head in place. Nick, my good ol' pal and dentist buddy, had a maniacal, sadistic look on his face. He looked pissed. Of course, he had been fighting to pull out a tooth for over an hour (it kept breaking into smaller, more embedded fragments). I was terrified then, but Monday when I peeked, he was just a blue collar body shop bud, grinding away in my mouth.

It must have been the gas. Once I embraced Nick, the dentist, as a blue collar good ol' boy, I thought about neurosurgeons. Blue collar. All of us, more or less, are in the same colored collars. My power tool is this PC. My unpleasant environment is sometimes the classroom. My physical burden is minimal, but hey, you try carrying a stack of essays and a cup of coffee.