Manifest Dentistry

I have an appointment with the dentist in a few days. Now, you may not think this a worthy subject for a blog. Indeed, you may be sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘yeah, so and what’. If this is the case then by all means fuck off.

Whoops, did I say that out loud? I’m sorry. You’ll have to forgive me but I’m a little bit tense. You see, this appointment is something which I have been putting off for a long time. For years, in fact. I’ve been putting it off for the simple reason that I am utterly, completely and most whole heartedly terrified of dentists. The thought of sitting in that chair fills me with the kind of dread usually reserved for gallows, guillotines, firing squads and episodes of Friends.

I don’t know why I fear them so much. It’s not like I’ve ever had an unusually bad experience with dentists. I’ve never lost a girlfriend to a dentist. I was not abused by a dentist as a child. My mother was not kidnapped by dentists. I never had a favourite pet murdered by a dentist. I wasn’t forced to watch my family being gunned down by a group of rogue dentists.

To my knowledge, dentists have not figured largely in my nightmares or my waking life at all. And yet, before this white-coated demon I become a wide-eyed, gibbering child prepared to let everyone else in the waiting room go first. I’ll even sit there all night and let the next day’s patients go first too. For crying out loud, I’ve had spinal surgery, the thought of which didn’t provoke a fraction of the terror in me that this appointment does.

I know I’m not alone in this, and psychologically speaking a phobia of dentists is hardly intriguing. My phobia of clowns and ice cream vans is a lot more interesting, but fortunately I don’t have an appointment with either of them in a few days. I’d just love to know where this fear originated. Maybe it was the movie Marathon Man? I remember watching that as a child and being horrified by Laurence Olivier’s sinister Nazi dentist. Is this what did the damage? Will I sit in that chair waiting for my dentist to ask me if it’s safe in a comedy German accent?

Or worse, will he turn out to be dressed as a clown? Will he honk his red nose, invite me to sit in his big, rainbow chair before offering me an ice cream? Will he slap around the room in his giant shoes waving a pneumatic drill in the air and shouting, “Nurse, give this man the gas, forthwith!”

I have got to get a grip.

That sterile room, the minty odour, the sound of rattling implements and that awful screeching drill. Rubber covered fingers and cold metal poking around my mouth while some smothered droning voice calls out strange numbers and says ‘hmm’ a lot.

I want my mum. And failing that, I want a semi-automatic weapon. And failing that, I want God to explain to me why he made our bodies so fucking high maintenance.