I am my dentist’s most hated patient.
I have spent countless visits over the last few years thinking, “No, everyone feels like this. Dentists are always rude about everyone’s mouth!” But honestly, I’m just going to go ahead and accept it: I am the mouth goblin of the dental office universe and everyone employed in the tooth world spends their Friday night happy hours making fun of me with other teeth professionals.
I am their special, terrible patient. They fucking hate me! They see me coming and they’re like, “Here comes the horrible mouth. Get her chair ready.” They even have a special door for me! Everyone else uses the front door but they make me come through the side so that none of the other patients know I’m there. Otherwise, everyone would feel unsafe and strange because of my deeply unpleasant mouth.
If I do need to be around other patients in passing—like, say, in the event that my special door is under maintenance—an announcement is whispered over the PA system that says, “The mouth goblin will be arriving shortly.” And then of course some child in the waiting room exclaims, “Here comes the mouth goblin!” like I’m fucking Santa Claus or something, and his mother shushes him and physically turns him around to face the wall so as not to look at my Horrendous Mouth. Before I enter the building, the receptionist instructs everyone to keep their mouth closed tightly so that my mouth does not “have a bad influence on them.”
And then, I wobble down the hallway on a tarp they placed down for specifically me that resembles a sort of trash red carpet leading up to my chair. I sit down and await my sentencing. The dentist walks in and begins speaking to me like she is my new stepmother who wants to send me away to boarding school. She prepares to Observe My Mouth, where she will be even more disappointed than she was the last time she did this. I can feel her disgust and I absorb it into my body gladly. I come here to be hated and to me, the hate simply feels like I’m eating a little snack. Yum, yum, yum.
After the cleaning, which is the most silent any room has ever been for any amount of time, the dentist gets upset with me that I have, once again, chosen to disobey her rules and schedule my next appointment for six months out (this is what my insurance covers) rather than four months out (my insurance does not cover this), as per her suggestion for the ticking time bomb that is my whole fucking mouth. This is because my dentist thinks my mouth is either, A.) going to kill me, or B.) my whole head is going to turn into one huge tooth. Like, tomorrow. Or at LEAST in four months and one day. In fact, every time I actually show up for my cleanings, everyone in the office is surprised that I have not yet been murdered and/or commandeered by my own horrible mouth.
And when it’s all over, I get out of the chair and the dentist’s assistant says, “Oh, Audrey, one more thing.” And I think to myself, “This is it. They’re going to kill me.” But I get lucky because all she does is hand me one of those little goody bags with the free toothbrush in it.
My dog also had a dental cleaning today but she is the perfect girl and came out looking like a perfect tongue goof. Here she is, very high on meds:
I’ll talk to you later,
-Aud