Mental Floss

There is no excuse for this, but I just recently went to the dentist after nearly a 10year absence. I was eating a piece of hard candy, which I pilfered from the jar on the top of our Human Resources director’s desk. I’ve actually been raiding the green-striped mint candies and blame her for my dental mishap.

One of my upper crowns came off in the course of my candy fest. I dreaded making my appointment since I haven’t seen my dentist for so long.

It’s a well-known family practice. My dentist is a real character with a unique sense of humor. His wife usually assists and his daughter runs the front office. His other assistant is a dead ringer for actress Amanda Bynes, or if she had blond hair, Cameron Diaz. But I digress.

Anyway, ready for a good scolding, I braced myself no pun intended. Well, the amazing thing is, except for my crown, my teeth were in good shape. I wanted to celebrate because there is nothing I hate more than going under the drill. I’ve been conditioned since an unfortunate childhood experience that the sound of that drill equals intense pain.

The office has state-of-the-art technology, which is a good thing, and besides pain killers, he has a main feature to distract me from the dreaded drill.

He has a TV mounted right above the patient chair so that I can be distracted when the drilling starts.

Drill in hand, he leaned over and I closed my eyes. Suddenly I heard a piercing sound and I death-gripped the chair handles and my back arched out of the chair. I let out an almost primitive sound, “Arrrrrrggggggghhhhh!” I opened my eyes and my dentist was staring at me saying, “I haven’t even started drilling yet. The noise you heard was a vacuum cleaner commercial on the TV.”

I laughed sheepishly and said, “Yeah, I really hate those infomercials.”