Dentistry

True story: the first time I saw this video I was in a dentist's chair.

Routine checkup. Well, it was sort of our first checkup. We went to our dentist's office one day to find that it wasn't there anymore and no one had told us it was moving or shutting down.

So we went to another dentist, and they did all the obligatory first-visit stuff: the interview, the questionaire checklist, the myriad of x-rays, the obligatory "you're missing such-and-such teeth on your bottom set..." "yes, I know, they were taken out when I was 11..." "why the hell would they take those teeth out? no one ever removes those teeth..."

I clearly remember them taking out those teeth and wishing that they had injected some anaesthetic into my neck too, because they had damn good roots on them and they were not coming out thankyouverymuch and it was taking all of the neck strength I had to keep my head down. The dentist finally had to call in an assistant to hold my head down so that she could yank it out.

I think the whole ordeal had everyone in the room thinking that it was probably a mistake to take out those particular teeth, but you can't just half pull out a tooth. Once you've started you pretty much have to finish it, and once you've pulled out one, you may as well pull out another for good measure.

Besides, dentists never ever make mistakes, unless they are the kind of mistakes that result in you needing a crown or an extra root canal or some other form of maxing out your dental plan for that year...

I digress.

My mom was at the same office, in another chair, sometime after the obligatory first visit stuff and was having her teeth cleaned by a hygenist. This usually doesn't take all that long because mom doesn't actually have many real teeth so there's not a lot to clean.

The hygenist was a middle-aged woman who seemed to take twice as long to do things as any normal person would/could do them. She explained to mom that she had been out of the workforce for a while and was just coming back part-time, like 6 or 8 hours per week. Knowing how anti-social my mother is, none of this information was actually asked for, and in reality, it must have been quite irritating, because a dentist's chair is the absolute last place in the world you would want to be having a long, drawn out conversation of pleasantries with someone you're already sure you don't like.

From then on, the conversation went something like:

"Congratulations, you have no cavities. Do you want the flossing demonstration?"

"No."

"I could do the flossing demonstration for you."

"I'd rather not, thank you. I've had it before."

"If you don't floss properly you'll get cavities."

"I floss every day and I don't have cavities."

"I can see on your x-ray that you must floss very well."

"Yes."

"Can I give you the flossing demonstration?"

"Give me the fucking flossing demonstration."

Mom was in the chair for over an hour and a half for a routine cleaning. One dentist down, so many more to go...