Teeth nazi

That would be my dentist, who I absolutely adore. No matter how many times I see him, he always speaks to me in Arabic, and I always answer in English. He speaks English well, but then again, I speak Arabic well.

As usual, I frantically start flossing my teeth two days before my annual visit. Coincidentally, I found out that I am supposed to have a check up every six months. Seriously? Why hasn't anyone told me this in the past TWENTY EIGHT years? And they said it like it's a well-known fact! Like I"m the last person in the northern hemisphere to know that. Well, next time put it in a memo and mail it to me.

Naturally, my dentist is smart enough to figure out that I don't regularly floss. Luckily, he asks me that with five tools in my mouth.

"How often do you floss..."
"ooolllllleeeeeeetttttttiiiiiiiiiiiccccccceeeeee" - that's all I could manage with a guilty look to indicate that I don't do it regularly.
"You know, if you floss regularly, your gums wouldn't bleed this much!"
"But I don't floss because my gums bleed whenever I do..."
"Because you don't floss..."

Obviously, this argument wasn't going anywhere. So I reluctantly gave up and let him do his work.

Even when I was a kid, I never complained about going to the dentist. I was in love with the family dentist. He was entertaining, and I am pretty sure he never cleaned his equipment. I'm also pretty sure some of his tools were rusted, but hey, somehow everything worked out just a-OK. Other than the fact that one of my teeth fell out, was replaced with a permanent one, then the permanent one fell out and was replaced with another permanent one.

Never mind that I never freaked out about going to the dentist, I still hate the sound those damn tools make. Humans can build a HUGE rocket and launch it into space, but can't make dentist tools that don't make the most disgusting noise imaginable? It has the same effect on me as 10 cats clawing a blackboard.

So, everything went well. When the dentist was done, he looked at me and said, "well, your front teeth are really good!" Oh geez, that takes care of what? 10 teeth? What about the other 22? Comments like that make me think that by the time I'm 40 I will wake up every morning and brush my one surviving tooth before going to work. Hopefully my dental insurance doesn't have any rules against being 40 and getting fitted for dentures.

I am convinced that there is no one out there with perfect teeth. I brush twice a day, and have done so as long as I can remember, but I still have a ton of cavities. It's genetic, we have bad teeth. But they're straight and nice, and I never needed braces. So I guess I'll take that over buck "teef" without cavities. I think it's the lesser of two evils. I have never been a toothy person or one of those people who resemble a horse when they smile or laugh. Of course, if fillings were still metalic, I would have enuogh in my mouth to replace a plane's broken wing. I'm just sayin'!

All in all, I got "yelled" at, yet again, by the dentist. But I did learn a new thing: I'm supposed to go twice a year. And next time, I will start flossing regularly at least a month before my appointment instead of two days! We'll see how that works.