By Alex Berger
As long as there are Devil Dogs and coffee ice cream within my reach, I will always have an uneasy acquaintance with dentists.
Actually, as a young child, I had no problem with dentists. They knew I was young and poor so they treated me faster, especially when I said, “This may hurt a little, Doc. I have no money.”
But when I got older, it was a different story. I remember the day before my wedding, the dentist noticed that I had a chipped front tooth and said, “I think I caught this problem just in time before the wedding.” He recommended that he place caps not only over the cracked tooth, but also over the three adjacent front teeth. “I can give you a million-dollar smile,” he said. “How about giving me just a $25 smirk?” I meekly countered, but he knew he had me.
Gloria, my intended, said I shouldn't do it. My mother, my seven siblings, and my cat (in her own way), all said I shouldn't do it. They said they all liked me exactly the way I was – tooth chip and all. But vain Alex didn't listen. And that, dear readers, was the beginning of my never-ending dental woes.
The dentist botched the “cap” job. He shaved two teeth too thin, and six months later, they both snapped off after I bit into an apple. He also managed to expose the nerve on another tooth.
This walking rationale for dental phobia had already received his payment, and he wound up with the million-dollar smile. Gloria married me, anyway – but not before I changed dentists.
A few months after my marriage, I bravely went to a new dentist with Gloria. “Look, Doc,” I told him, “I want you to pull a bad tooth, but we are in a rush. So forget the gas and all that.”
“You have guts,” he said to me admiringly. ” Which tooth is it?”
“Go ahead and show him your bad tooth, Gloria,” I said. Neither Gloria nor the dentist appreciated my little attempt at gallows humor. I submitted to the procedure, and requested the gas –
