TANGENTS By John Saccenti This year, the dentist’s office is all smiles.
Hey everybody, they gave me floss this time, and I got it without a lecture.
Last year in these very pages I whined about going to the dentist. The waiting, the gruff looks, the many lectures about the virtues of flossing and the smell of grinding teeth were all fair game.
The experience was so bad that I had considered forgoing the dentist and dental care altogether in favor of a set of choppers that I could remove nightly and soak by my bedside.
But now, a little less than a year later, and after months of gargling, and flossing, I’ve decided to reconsider. Perhaps a trip to the dentist isn’t so bad, at least when you come out with a clean bill of health.
That’s right, no cavities, and as a result, no lectures or dirty looks. Heck, they even got me in and out in about 45 minutes, a record for the Saccenti family. (This can only lead me to the conclusion that dentists merely hate the cavities, not the patients. But that’s only a theory.)
When I showed up for my midmorning appointment Monday, I was more than sure that I would be spending half the day in the bright, white waiting room of my one and only dentist. I’d watch cheesy daytime television shows where neighbors and friends sue each other, read month-old magazines with predictions about the NCAA Football Championship game and fall behind at work.
My mood didn’t change when, just minutes after sitting down, my name was called. I laid back in the dentist’s chair, told the technician that I was flossing regularly (figured she’d want to know, plus, I was feeling sarcastic) and waited while she snapped off a few X-rays.
Now, I’m not exaggerating when I say that the dentist walked in not six or seven minutes later, poked my teeth with a hook, and proclaimed me cavity free and ready for my cleaning.
After the shock wore off, I walked back to the waiting room a different man, a man who would be leaving shortly, a man who wouldn’t have to return for, well, awhile. I smiled, showing off my handsome grin, and telling anyone who would listen that I was a regular flosser. "Why yes, I do floss, thanks for asking."
A half-hour later I was on my way home, the proud owner of a new tooth brush and a pack of floss.
There are many people to thank for my success. First, there are the dental professionals who chastised me last year the two who asked if I flossed, the one who told me I should gargle (with Listerine, not Scope) and the dentist whose practiced calm gave him an air of malevolence that scared me into taking better care of my teeth.
There was the loveable gang in the waiting room who left their toddlers alone to wait and, presumably, be babysat by my wife and me.
And of course, there are the readers whose response to last year’s column was supportive (except for the dentist who complained about the piece to a friend of mine, but not to me). I even received a bottle of Listerine and a box of Listerine Pocket Packs from the Reimans of South Brunswick, family friends who clearly cared whether I would be chewing or gumming my food that day and that I did so with minty fresh breath.
To all these people I have to say, thanks. I will never again gargle, brush, floss or wait anxiously in a dentist’s chair again without thinking of all of you.
John Saccenti is news editor for the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].