Dentist yesterday. I’d broken my “flipper” (fake front tooth) and needed a new one.
It’s a curious procedure. The dentist and assistants rush into the room with a warm wad of bright yellow putty, freshly boiled, and shove it into your mouth before it has time to cool. Then they stick a horseshoe-shaped mold in there and urge you “Don’t bite down!”
I was picking yellow guck out of my teeth for hours. Brought up memories of eating playdough as a child.
But the real image I carry away from the experience is of dentists rushing around. The whole dental appointment thing is usually so sedentary—someone dressed austerely in white painstakingly picking at your mouth, having a leisurely one-sided conversation.
This, on the other hand, was like some weird new sport, like they’d have on some embarrassing TV competition. How fast can you fill the mouth with yellow goo?
The tooth fairy is mortified.