"Please stop smiling sir, you're scaring the children."
I looked like a pirate, but it wasn’t Halloween
Have you ever had one of those moments in life when you just let out a loud “Arghhhh” and possibly wanted to append a simple “Matey” afterward?
No? Oh. Well, I certainly have.
I grew up kind of looking forward to going to the dentist.
I know that sounds a bit crazy but you’d be surprised how much a little basket full of free toys can motivate a kid. Or how a lack of an adult version can have the opposite effect.
Not to mention that exquisitely delectable flavor of fancy fluoride foam they called bubblegum.
Fortunately for their malpractice insurance providers, somebody at the chemical flavoring factory decided kids associate bubblegum flavor with ‘Do Not Swallow’ enough to save at least a few kids from, umm, fluorodosis?
Sure, let’s go with that.
Needless to write, in my adult years, I no longer have the fervorous flouridish passion to go to the dentist at a frequency a normal person would consider ‘regular’.
Or ‘necessary’, depending on the maturity level.
And yet go I do, kicking and screaming at myself for not flossing enough, drinking too much bubbled pottassiumy goods, and for ever starting the most ridiculous despicable disgusting yet somehow enjoyable habit I ever started — smoking.
My life’s greatest shame. And a deliciously evil one at that.
For the smoker, not for other people, as I’m repeatedly reminded of and experience.
The day was like any other in Singapore.
Hot as f*ck and on my way to drink a pint after work. But today wasn’t my usual post-work ranting meetup with friends to gossip about how idiotic certain individuals were while ignoring the second half of the equation.
Where it was of course, in fact, we, who were also the idiots.
No, today was the dreaded day.
I had booked myself an appointment with a dentist in my neighborhood. I did this knowingly knowing they didn’t have a single free toy waiting for me at the end.
Cheap joyless bastards.
I had recently moved and was trying out a new dentist’s office near my home. It was in a strip mall of sorts. New place, everything shiny, everything trustworthy on the outside.
My dentist du jour turned out to be a lovely short-statured lady ex-pat from the UK, on some sort of international franchise career exchange program of sorts. I didn’t ask the details, I just wanted a thorough cleansing of my sinful mouth.
This particular dentist was everything you would want in someone about to be brandishing potential weaponry over your numb incapacitated face.
Clearly intelligent, very answeryish of any questions, and made the experience as relaxing as can be.
Down I laid and the onslaught began.
It was nothing out of the norm, the usual uncomfortable but not quite painful industrial grinding of my mouth bones took the usual amount of time.
And then in plopped my old childhood friend, the fiendishly delicious but forbidden-to-drink fluoride paste.
If you remember the insidious styrofoamy device, you’re supposed to clamp down on it for a few minutes and then rinse. Or something like that. Is that where rinse and repeat came from? I can’t quite remember, I lived in a neighborhood full of pubs supplying forgetful-juice, nor did I invent the term. From what I remember.
But that’s when the first sign of things to come popped up.
“I see that you’re a smoker.”
“Mmm.” she heard me mumble, while trying to mussitate, “No sh*t, you just spent 45 minutes inside my smokeden of a mouth, Ms. Sherlock.”
“Have you ever heard of caries?”
“Mmm.” she heard me mumble, while trying to maunder, “I already have a mother, thanks.”
“Oh, well I’m just going to play this little instructional video on it for you then.”
“MnnnMnnnnnnn!” she heard me mumbleyell, while trying to disseminate my feelings of displeasure.
Sigh. No where to run. Only delicious forbidden fluoride to not swallow. Oh well, mouth clean, face numb, I went off to pay the bill. Lo and behold that little 2 minute Youtube knockoff video cost me over $30.
“Oh, you don’t have full dental coverage? Well, you shouldn’t have asked for the video then.”
“Ah, I see you’re no stranger to late-stage capitalist trickery, my dear new dentist,” I imagined in snark.
The receptionist handed me a prescription mouth wash which, as explained by the nice dentist, would help re-strengthen my teeth against decay and erosion.
Off I went to enjoy the evening, starting a new 2 week ritual of using the prescription mouth wash twice a day.
The End.
Is how I wish this story finished.
Only a few days later, I had a coworker notice something peculiar at lunch, leaned in and asked me:
“J.J….is there…umm…is that…is your mouth…black?”
“Hah!” another anti-smoker on an anti-smoker anti-just-let-me-enjoy-things tirade, I assumed.
“No, seriously JJ. Open your mouth, let us see!”
I ran to the little girls’ room and looked in the mirror. If I had a glass I would’ve dropped it in sheer shock and horror and anger.
My mouth was indeed black.
Just as black as a pirate’s heart, teeth, or movie career after getting canceled via a disturbingly messy divorce. Every single ounce of every single calcium atom on my 30-something-year-old teeth were stained with a darkness so murky it had surely come from the pits of Brad in Interview With the Vampire.
That is, devilishly dark and possibly a stretch of an analogous poor attempt at humor.
So…off to the dentist yet again as soon as they let me book an appointment. I’ll spare you the details of trying my best attempts of self-ventriloquisting with a closed mouth for a whole week straight.
“Smile!” was heard by well-meaning teasing co-workers so many times I lost count.
“Fmmjhk you.” was retorted at least as often.
Needless to say, it was not enjoyable.
I went back for an explanation.
The British dentist, who I can only imagine stopped immediately at the big black ‘X’ on her ‘Suitable Careers for Me, Mate’ test where it said ‘Dentistry’ and ignored the rest of the options where ‘✓’ was prescribed, surprised me.
She flat out denied any wrongdoing. Or any possibility that my previous recent visit was at all related to my newfound Rocky Horror Picture Mouth.
I sh*t you not, the first idea she said was…“Are you sure your teeth weren’t always that black?”
This, coming from a woman who had just taken the scenic route inside my mouth less than a week before, left me in utter shock. That astoundingly, head-smacking, ‘Is this the real life?’ kind of shock that happens once a decade to most people.
Or, every Tuesday between 9 and 11 if you’re weird like me.
I calmly explained how I—and I hate to use this term these days—“did my research” and found some very explicit online instructions for the prescription mouthwash.
That being—DO NOT DRINK OR SMOKE ANYTHING WITHIN 1 HOUR OF TAKING.
I was completely wrong, she assured me.
There is no way she couldn’t have known a thing, or believe that I could find out a thing from a company’s website about their products that she, herself, wasn’t aware of.
That left her with 1 course of mindsetting:
Nay! It was my fault, said she.
My teeth must’ve always been as black as the night sky after Elon Muskrat’s satellites one day block out all the stars from our precious view.
Surely.
“The good news,” she said, “we can probably completely get rid of it.”
“Probably.”
Enter another 45 minutes of scratching, scraping, gnawing, and grinding.
She smiles. Her assistant holds up the mirror. My teeth were back to their smokerish off-white beautiful pearlyness. Just the way I like it.
As I meandered out of the room to her repeated denials of anything done wrong, I went to the front desk with a look of exasperated exhausted angry relief.
“That will be $75, sir.”
I grudgingly paid the tab and went directly to the nearby pub. And so ended my adventurous week as a Singapore Pirate.
The only treasure I got to keep was a little bit of shame, embarrassment, a new dentist, and a much bigger smile than I ever had before.
At least for a few days, anyway.
Oh, and ale. Can’t be a pirate without ale.
Argggghh.
J.J. Pryor
Can you take a quick moment and like/subscribe/share/comment etc etc bla bla bla—you know the deal. I’m ruled by an algorithm these days, and you are the puppeteers.
Thanks peeps. Cheers
You are definitely a foreigner. No true American would have even have gotten to their car before calling their attorney. One of the many things wrong with America is the large number of attorneys elected to public office.
Seriously?! I'm sorry, I did have to laugh because you painted the picture so clearly. Off to the chopping block for that dentist for sure. And yes, as an ex smoker, I totally hear/sympathize/understand. Nasty habit but damn it was good!