I was born, it seems to me, with Japanese gold and Indian silver in my mouth. Some of my earliest memories revolve around Dentists’ chairs, with wads of cotton stuffed in my mouth. Despite a decent dental hygiene routine, you know, brush your teeth a couple of times, floss once a month habit, my teeth are permanently in need of professional attention.

“It’s genetic,” explained a nurse, once, absentmindedly tapping my ivories keeping time with the tune playing on the speakers in the Dental office. She had a car mechanic’s wrench holding my mouth agape and the tears running down my face, she thought, was at my fate and not the excruciating pain her tune keeping was inflicting.

Take my wisdom teeth, for instance. Even though I can safely declare that no one will ever blame me of being wise, my wisdom teeth have been appearing regularly. Either that or I’m sprouting molars my dentists pull out every other year. And though the teeth themselves are weak and prone to cavities and over-crowding, the roots are always strong and hard to pull out. A traumatic scene, it is, to see a grown man, my dentist curse, swear and sweat trying to pull my teeth out with pliers. He usually uses both his hands with a couple of nurses hanging on to his waist for added leverage.

As a wee young lass, I was once the subject of a dissertation by a bloke studying to be a dentist. As a reward for enduring hours on the chair, my mouth permanently open for scrutiny by earnest young fellow student dentists, I was given bags and bags of candy. My sweet tooth, you will be glad to know is healthy as ever, no cavities on that one. That young student, having made a tidy little sum from what he learned from my teeth, is now, retired and living in Florida.

The last time I visited my dentist, he was all brusque and business like till he peeped into my mouth. His eyes turned dreamy, his voice soft, as he began to tell me the work that needed to be done to fix my teeth. There was talk of bridges, root canals, cement braces, an early mortgage pay-off, the Hawaiin holiday he had promised his wife years ago and also of sending his boys to private school. Fortune, he knew, was staring at him in the face. I staggered out of there, my head throbbing, with the entire staff in the office waving me goodbye gleefully and telling me ‘come back soon y’hear’.
My fillings almost triggered airport metal detectors the last time I flew. My bridges are porcelain now and I’m getting braces next week to correct some wayward front teeth.

I hope you don’t detect a Sienfeldian prejudice, in me. I am not an anti-Dentite, in fact some of my best friends are dentists, I am glad to say. When all my siblings decided early on, in life to study medicine and become healers, I begged each one to consider becoming a dentist. They desisted, maybe knowing their main source of income could turn out to be me. They also dashed my hopes of having a dentist in the family by marrying physicians pursuing other medical disciplines.

Now, I live in the hope that one of my children will take up this noble profession and I can get a set of brand new teeth in exchange for baby -sitting their brats.

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