I recently rediscovered a bunch of things I’d written over the past few years. Some of them are unfinished, but still fun, so I’m not sure if you’ll see any of those yet. We shall see :-)
But this first one is an observation I wrote when I was 18 and waiting in our dentist’s office. Every word is truth!
A Dentists Office
October 16, 2008
I sit curled up in the corner of the overstuffed, leather couch in the dentist’s waiting room. I am the only one there. The TV hanging in the corner plays some history show about ghosts, the volume muted. Two hygienists chat politics behind the desk. The air is full of the smell of the tooth cleaner, making me feel sick, feeling almost as is I had already had my teeth cleaned. My mouth is full of the taste of the tooth past I’d used a few moments before. I can hear the sound of a drill coming from one of the rooms, the high pitched squealing causes my head to ache.
I look around the dim room wherein I await my appointment. The walls are adorned by two large, framed posters; not helping to lighten the mood of the room. One poster is a photograph of a lonely white plate with colorful toothpicks casually tossed upon it. The presents of the poster brings nothing but forlornness and loneliness to the viewer, not the emotions one would hope to experience while waiting to have a tooth filled. However, the second poster makes this look like a field of daisies in comparison, and I would not be surprised should this second poster create nightmares in many a child’s dreams. This was a dark photograph of a large, wooden barrel that is bursting full of laughing white masks; chin to nose, with wide, red, wicked smiles smirking with menace. An inscription below the picture reads “Barrel of Laughs”.
Someone has changed the channel on the TV; now the screen is illuminated with the bright colors of Cartoon Network, the antics of Tom and Jerry play across the screen.
A plastic tree stands lazily in the corner, in dire need of a dusting. A coffee table stands erect in the center of the room, bearing the weight of many years worth of out dated magazines. A small bookshelf off to the side holds children's books and toys, the same I used to entertain myself when I was younger. The wall above the shelf is plastered with dozens upon dozens of self-developed photos of kids sitting in the dentists chair on their first appointments, told to smile and “show their teeth”. The looks in the children's eyes are unsure as to what there is to smile about. I find my own hesitant smile near the middle.
Free booklets with information about teeth hang from a display on another wall. The models in the pictures plastered on the booklets smile insanely; their oh-so-perfect teeth gleam with an unnaturally white intensity, a promise of what we might achieve.
The TV emits a childish whistling music, to happy and out of place in the otherwise quiet building.
The time is 3:13pm; my appointment had been set for 3:00. The dentist is late, as usual. I am bored. I’m hungry. I hope I don’t have any cavities.
The door to the waiting room opens. Karen, the hygienist that always cleans my family’s teeth pokes her head in and cheerfully tells me that she could take me now. How any sane person could be so happy in this dismal place I’ll never know.
I gather my things and follow her to the empty room across the hall, silently greeting the old, hulking clown head as I pass. The clown’s body is a helium tank; his lips are permanently pursed to inflate balloons. In the past, kids would receive a balloon to keep them happy after their appointment, but now his only occupation is to lurk in the hall, smiling to all who pass.
As I lower myself into the seat of the dentist chair, I grip the armrests, my head cocked forward to allow Karen to pin the paper bib around my neck. I squint against the bright light hanging above my head.
After lowering my chair, Karen closes in on my mouth with her glinting tools, chatting nonstop all the time.
I am helpless; all I can do is lay there, a victim to another teeth cleaning.
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