Dental Fear? What Kind of Stupid Question is THAT?
by Arturo
So I chose the most optimal alternative: a root canal. Scared? What kind of a stupid question is that? I recall hearing the dentist tell me this diagnosis while I played a flashback in my mind of one visit I'd made to another graduate of the Spanish Inquisition, who had managed to drill right into my optic nerve (or so it felt), when at the tender age of 10 I got dropped off to check out his little shop of horrors. This is back in the day when going to bed with a lolly pop clenched between your jaws was the next best thing to a flavorless plastic pacifier. I'm amazed I wasn't wearing dentures by Prom Night. But one tooth would be coming out no doubt. And ever since that inauspicious event at 10, I'd been marred by the fear of getting my nerve merely slighted. Now we were talking of killing it. Is this kind of stuff legal? Don't you need like some kind of special dispensation from the Queen of England or something for that, 007? Any way, my new mommy drops me off, right? (That'd be my wife.) And here I am 20 year since childhood getting that same ol' sensation to void what I well know I emptied out right before getting to the lobby, and which won't make a spit of difference in avoiding the indescribably agony that no doubt awaits me, when my name gets called. In I go. Up I hop onto the rack. There goes the bib strapped to my neck. No going back now. How's that? Somebody said hi? I dunno. I got me some tunnel vision going here. And, wouldn't you know it, while immersed in this dark medieval vision of despair, what do I hear but...Mozart! "Um, that Mozart?" I manage to whimper. "Sure is. I believe you told us this was your preference. Is that not so?" I had forgotten. I was actually asked well in advance for my preference in music to relax. "Wow. It worked," I said, "I'm actually relaxed now." "That's wonderful," I hear, "We have some clips from the movie 'Amadeus' we think you might enjoy while we prepare things for you. Would you like to see it?" "Amadeus? That's, like, one of my favorite movies!" And so it went from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment Age. Now, isn't it great to know things have changed a bit in the last few years?
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