Last night I had my first dentist appointment in six or seven years. I'm not entirely sure when my last cleaning was, but I know I was in college, and I graduated in 2003. Yeah. So. I was fully prepared to walk in there and be presented with a list of incredibly expensive treatments that I would need to keep my teeth from falling out of my mouth and running off to start a life robbing kids of their Halloween candy or something. In fact they wouldn't even schedule a cleaning right away, just a full set of xrays and a detailed intake exam by the dentist. It sounded a bit like I was being committed for full time dental treatment for the next six months, but I sucked it up and went for my Appointment of Doom.
It wasn't anything like I expected. I did gag on those plastic things they put in your mouth for dental xrays, even after they numbed my entire mouth with this mint-flavored goo they use to do dental xrays on kids, but I did in fact survive. Afterward the dentist came in and spent the next twenty minutes telling me how perfect and wonderful and amazing my teeth were. She kept touching my arm and going on and on about how she would love to trade teeth with me. My teeth were perfect, my gums were perfect, and she said if I hadn't told her she would have guessed that my last cleaning was maybe two months ago, tops. She even followed me out to reception to make my appointment for the actual cleaning, now that they knew all I needed was a regular cleaning and not any other crazy expensive stuff, and continued telling me how perfect my teeth were. She even gushed to the receptionist.
Clearly I win at teeth. If all dentists treated me like that I would never have gone seven years between appointments.
