A Princess Bride Retelling of a Dental Tale
I have to self-talk myself into the dentist’s chair far too much for a grown person. It’s one of my hold-outs, e.g., I still think it rocks that I get to buy gum any time I want and carry it in my purse, and I still hate having my teeth scraped by anything. We mature in varying degrees, it’s just a fact.
When my kids needed braces, I cried for them. And probably not in private. I can’t lie to my precious babies, and the fact that we haven’t perfected teeth-straightening beyond GLUE and METAL is just beyond me. The tightening, dear God, the tightening. I apologized for birthing them and for passing on my dental genetics, told them it would end eventually and they might forget the worst of it. “It’s true for childbirth,” I said. “Otherwise, there would only be one of you.”
The youngest doesn’t believe me, I don’t think. He wants this rite of passage. Which is weird because his dental history began with some bunk beds, a jumping contest, and the following, which shall be told William Goldman style.
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The surgeon’s assistant was an older lady with bleached hair and a white mask “because of her cold”. We’ll call her the Albino. Count Rugen will be played by the nicest female dentist I’ve ever met in my life except for the really crappy morning she just walked us through. The nice receptionist nurse named Julie will play a nice receptionist nurse named Julie.
As we lay Jake in the dentist’s chair, which certainly may as well have been a torture machine, they said “Welcome to the pit of despair.” And then they cleared their throats, wiggled his tooth and added, “Don’t even think about trying to escape,” i.e., the tooth definitely has to go. Then they stuck him with a needle that I swear on my pretty Apple laptop was one inch square, and he screamed and cried while Count Rugen, the albino, and I held him down and tried to tell him this wasn’t as torturous as it appeared.
Then Julie, who I could not in this moment cheerfully call nice anymore, ripped me out of the room as Jake’s eyes rolled around in their sockets and he lost his grip on reality while I lost grip of his hand. I managed not to cry in the waiting room because of the really nice lady who told us stories and complained about how overbooked the office was that morning as we sheepishly nodded along, a teensy bit aware that our little emergency surgery probably added to the back-up.
Two minutes later (give or take) — and believe me, these were the most expensive two minutes of our lives, the tooth was out. Soon we were ushered into his recovery room. The torture here was seriously acute. “We removed his tooth,” Count Rugen said. And with it we sucked one year of his life away. So tell us how you feel, Jake. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.
To which Jake cried. If you can call it crying. It was more like his vocal cords were outside of his body. They were triggered by the slightest word coming from the mouths of any of the three previously mentioned players. Any time any of them walked in the room and started speaking, the vocal cords sounded an alarm that was a low, crying moan I will never forget. His arms also seemed detached from his body and periodically rose from it in slow motion. When the arm pointed towards the door and the vocal cords said, “Truck”, we knew the three were starting to reattach, and we’d be able to go home soon.
I’ll get used to the gap. But let’s just say the next time the three boys are alone in the bedroom, and any of the voices seem to be coming from the bunk bed, and there is anything even resembling the giggle of a friendly jumping contest, I’m tearing into that bedroom like a maniac and ripping the children apart like I’m sucking away one year of their lives.
The End.
