A Visit To The Dark Side

With a positive outcome!

The other day I accepted the invitation to a routine teeth cleaning session at my dentist’s torture chamber (aka – surgery).

As I always have the first appointment of the day, the apparatchiks are normally still setting up as I ease myself, uneasily, into their version of a recliner.

Having settled in and been laid back, goggled and bibbed like an infant astronaut waiting to be launched into the stratosphere, small talk ensues as I am asked, ‘how I am.’

Unfortunately, I must begin all of these chats as though in the confessional, despite not being of that persuasion. “Forgive me, hygienist, for I have sinned. My flossing has been as intermittent as Trump telling the truth and my Water Pik has been in as much demand as a new Tesla. Also, I continue to brush too hard causing me to dump too many splay-bristled brushes into the already overcrowded landfills.”

The response is normally, at worst a ‘tut-tut’ and ‘never mind,’ but equally it is offset by a dramatic rolling up of sleeves, a flexing of muscles, and a glint in the eye like a manic WWE wrestler about to pulverize me not into submission, but extinction.

Armed with a mouth mirror, sickle probe, periodontal probe, scaler, and vacuum cleaner and as many arms as an octopus she begins to fill my mouth whilst concurrently continuing to ask questions. Most of which are answered with a “Gogh, eugh, or ngh” A language I didn’t know I spoke, but one she readily seems to understand.

In a moment of respite, as she searches for thumb screws or something similar, and in view of my imminent obliteration, I try and mitigate my pending pain and self-defenselessness by appealing to the mauler’s better side and say that I much prefer going to the dentist than the doctor’s and I can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t feel the same.

Confusion sets in. I can see it in her eyes, even through the two sets of goggles that separate us.

“Why is that?” she asks incredulously. Apparently thinking I am minimizing and underestimating her brutality.

“Well, at the dentist you can’t do too much to me. Fill a cavity perhaps, although rarely. Perform an extraction, even rarer. And rarer still, perform some other form of mysterious surgery.

At the doctor’s they can tell me, ‘The end is nigh,’ or mutter on about treatments, not cures, which is never good.

“Interesting,” she said before the glint returned and the full-scale assault continued.

It did get me to thinking though.

Aggie, my great grandmother, lived well into her late nineties; cancer took an aunt in her early 50s; another relative, a cousin, developed cancer but it went into remission.

You never know. We know that there is no ultimate escape, even if, like my cousin, you get a reprieve.

You might get an extension but there are never exceptions. The end comes to us all.

Given that, as we look forward with uncertainty, why would we: -

· Postpone a dream?

· Hold an un-necessary grudge?

· Obsess about how we look?

· Need other people’s confirmation to be happy?

· Allow injustices?

· Look for, or wait for, approvals?

· Compromise our convictions?

· Allow ourselves to be treated unfairly or dismissed?

· Beat ourselves up over the past?

No, we often promise ourselves that we will do something someday.

Well, let’s make today that someday: -

· Ask anything!

· Say everything!

· Give yourself a break!

· Show mercy and get past things!

· Eat that piece of real, or metaphorical, cake!

· Respect the lines on your face that you have earned through joy and sorrow!

· Show, speak, and spread love!

· Stop self-destructing and self-doubting!

· Find the hill worth dying on!

· Have another nibble of that cake!

· Be worthy!

And don’t forget to floss and brush lightly otherwise I will send over my illustrious hygienist.