There is only one medical profession so terrible they have to bribe their patients to return

Today, I'm going to the dentist.

Going to visit the dentist today for my biannual cleaning. Dentists are dreadful people and their hygienists are Satan’s minions. It’s not just that the process of tooth cleaning, cutting, filing, sawing, and drilling is so scary – because it IS very scary – it’s also that somebody chose to inflict so much terror on their clientele as a career. Who does that?

Bad people.

I have always dreaded dental cleanings, especially that little poky thing that they slide into each of your teeth to check for cavities. Stick, stick, stick. And then if, God forbid, it catches, you’ve got a cavity. I’ve had many cavities in my life. I’ve had wisdom teeth extracted, teeth chip, and fall out. I’ve had one root canal. When it comes to matters of the mouth, frankly, I’ve had below average luck.

Of course, luck doesn’t have much to do with it. My oral hygiene care is, frankly, not up to snuff. I don’t always brush twice a day and I don’t floss with any regularity. Sometimes I rub sugar all over my gums and leave it there for weeks at a time. For fun, I like to catch fired bullets with my teeth. It’s a great party trick but it plays hell with your tooth enamel.

Everybody dislikes going to the dentist. Because it’s scary. Because our mouths are orifices and we generally don’t want people conducting their business in our orifices, unless we are talking about a very specific orifice and a very specific business. We don’t welcome intrusions into our eyes, ears, or anuses. There’s a little more give-and-take with the mouth, since we cram stuff into there all the time, but only rarely is the stuff we put in there pointy and metallic.

These are bad people. Steve Martin had to retire from acting and become a professional banjo player because he was so traumatized after playing this part.

Dentists always make a big show about how “gentle” they are, how they cater to “nervous patients.” Well, I’m a nervous patient and I haven’t noticed any difference whatsoever between the various dentists I’ve visited over the years. They all got their training at Abu Ghraib. They love nothing more than loading up that little machine they’ve got with baking soda and sandblasting your teeth like they’re trying to graffiti from them. It doesn’t exactly hurt, but it’s pain-adjacent.

This is why the “sadistic dentist” is such a trope of pop culture. Whether it’s Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors or Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man, dentists have long played the role of torturer in our imaginations. Because, as I said, they’re cruel and hateful people.

They’re smart, too, these dentists. They know that if you don’t schedule your next cleaning as soon as you’re doing with the current one, they’ll never see you again. That’s why they make you book it six months in advance. They know that six months might as well be, “never again” in the minds of their traumatized patients. So they’ll say, “Go see Denise on the way out and she’ll schedule you for your next time,” and then you do it because you’ll do anything to get out there as soon as you can.

And then Denise says, “Is September 18^th good?”

And you say, “That should be fine,” because you assume you probably won’t even be alive in six months.

Then six months goes by and now you’ve got to go back to the dentist as if that previous appointment never happened at all! What a racket.

There’s also so much guilt associated with dentistry. Yes, I know I should floss. We’ve been having this conversation for decades. Am I going to suddenly start flossing now? We both know I’m not so why do we go through the charade every time of you saying, “You need to floss more,” and me saying, “I will.”

Let’s be honest with each other for two seconds – I won’t and you know I won’t.

There have been times in my life when I have gone years in between dental appointments. While it’s great to put my mouth out of mind, eventually it caught up to me. Like I said, I’ve had teeth just kind of fall out on me. That’s never a good feeling. You’re eating something and, suddenly, your tooth isn’t there? It’s a very sinister trick. Yes, trick. I think dentists put a little Escape From New York style neck collar on certain teeth. If you don’t go back to the dentist within a certain amount of time, the collar explodes and your tooth falls out. Kind of like what happened with all those Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon yesterday.

There is something kind of humbling about the fact that everybody has to go to the dentist. Bruce Springsteen, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Victoria Beckham. Everybody. All of us have to endure those latex-wrapped hands digging around our mouths while we stare at distracting daytime television on the screen above us. How many people have only seen Judge Judy from a dentist’s chair?

I have also found that my dread about going to the dentist usually exceeds the actual discomfort of being at the dentist. That’s part of the con. They want you to experience as much discomfort as you can in the run-up to the appointment. They feed on your fear, like vampires. It’s what sustains them. It’s why dentists never age and it’s why they never die.

If you’re one of those people who thinks going to the dentist isn’t so bad, ask yourself this: what other doctor gives you presents on the way out? NO OTHER DOCTOR DOES THIS!!! Sure, pediatricians give kids stickers, but no other medical profession has to bribe their clients with actual parting gifts. No other doctor has swag bags. Your eye doctor isn’t like, “Thanks for stopping by. Here’s a free pair of sunglasses on the house.” No. Only dentists do this. Because they know you’ve just been traumatized and they are trying to shut you up. That little bag of mini-toothpaste and toothbrushes is their NDA. In fact, there’s a good chance they’ll have me killed today for speaking out. I’m going to the dentist today. If I don’t make it back, you know why.