I Love The Dentist

9 out of 10 dentists recommend my blog, and the one that doesn't is just a bastard

The title of this blog is not clickbait. In a shocking twist of events here at The Stump, I will be forgoing the clear opportunity I have here to write a snarky, sarcasm-laden, long-form insult of a thing. I reserve that treatment for actual grievances, such as networking. Instead, I will mostly be yelling at you, dear reader, as you are almost certainly wrong about this topic.

I’m making an admission - I really do love the dentist, Stumpies. Twice a year I get to visit my happy place, and I look forward to it like a kid on Christmas morning. Now, let’s start with a big caveat here that will - I hope, I beg - silence some of your balking: I love routine dental checkups/cleanings. This is not about that root canal you had last winter, so I don’t want to hear about it. In sharp contrast to the peace I feel at my twice-yearly checkups, I nearly lost my jinkies the first and only time I had to have a cavity filled that required numbing. Having my mouth numbed is like taking away Babe Ruth’s bat; it’s like taking away Michael Jordan’s basketball; it’s like taking away Bob Dylan’s right to go “hnuumba suhnaaaa fdhussha” for 15 minutes [ironically, my Bob Dylan impression gets a lot better once my mouth is numbed]. The sensation of being numb reallyyyyy starts loosening my mental screws in an embarrassing fashion. I remember getting my wisdom teeth out as a teenager and, when the numbing had still not worn off 16 hours later, I do believe I cried about it. My childhood dentist once filled two cavities without numbing, and I would like to give that man a firm handshake for realizing that numbness is a torture in its own right.

Back to the point - this blog is about your routine dental cleanings, not anything that requires slicing, dicing, drilling, filling, or most heinously, numbing. So, why do I love the dentist? Lean back, bite down, and let me tell you…

It’s like a massage for your teeth!

No, it does not hurt, you big baby. And if it does, I’m squarely calling that a *skill issue.* Maybe actually hit the floss and the toothbrush a little harder and you wouldn’t be one meal away from gingivitis!

A proper dental cleaning for which you have adequately prepared is not unlike a thousand tiny massages for each tooth. Yes, they have to pull your cheeks a little wonky to do it, but I pinky promise you will adjust if you take a deep breath and don’t panic for once in your life. If you never grew out of your childhood fear of needles, you may be scared of the “scraper thing.” Get a grip! It is barely even noticeable. The nice hygienist is going to use that tool to fix your disgusting mouth, and in exchange you are going to be gently poked ‘round the gum line as if you were having a shiatsu massage from a microscopic massage therapist. Turn off your fight or flight response for a second; this is not ‘Nam. Use that big ol’ rational brain of yours to stop anticipating imaginary pain before it happens and voila! You won’t feel pain. Relinquish your desire for control and free yourself from expectations. If you have Advanced Plaque, you may even get to enjoy the water pick [shoutout the braces years for introducing me to that one]. This is even gentler, and quite literally it is just cool water in your mouth. If you have an aversion to that, I have bad news for you about the concept of beverages.

Your irrational fear of the dentist is because you see Steve Martin as Orin Scrivello, D.D.S. in Little Shop of Horrors (love you, Steve, but you did dentists dirty with this one). Instead, consider maturing and considering the handsome John Stamos as Carl Howell in Glee. He is, in fact, one of the few redeemable characters in Glee.

“OOO but the NOISES are so SCARY!!” Oh my god get a grip!!! I know for a damn fact that half of you that have subscribed to this blog watch horror movies as cute little fun girls’ nights. I would also be willing to bet that a sizable portion of you listen to music that sounds functionally no different than a dentist drill [I’m looking at you, Weezer]. The tools at the dentist are machines, and machines make noise sometimes. Especially if the machines are small but fast. This is simply physics 101; it is not the dentist monster coming to eat your face. Plus, the best thing about the noises is that it drowns out your own thoughts. Horror movie and Weezer fans may not capture all of you, dear readers, but certainly people who are reading my blog in their precious free time cannot be alone with their thoughts, or why else would you be tolerating me? Just listen to the motors. Think about the mechanics of the compressed air. Contemplate what the factory looks like where they manufacture such intricate contraptions. You will find the time peacefully drifting by.

this is what u weenies are scared of

I would be remiss to not mention the mouthfeel after

Honestly, this isn’t one of my personal top-tier reasons, but it’s undeniably true and probably the biggest crowd-pleaser I’ll have today. One cannot deny that the feeling of a spotlessly clean mouth puts a certain pep in your step for the rest of the day. Tell me you aren’t smiling a little more when you’re feeling all minty and expertly-flossed.

One of the reasons people love New Years as a holiday is that it represents an opportunity to reset. Ate too much, drank too much, slept too little this year? New Years absolves you of those sins. We all get a blank slate to be new people at 12:00am on January 1st. The dentist is the same, but it often happens twice a year! Flossed too little, drank too much coffee, ate too much toffee this year? Well good news! It’s Dentist Day! All your sins are absolved after that appointment, and you have a blank slate to be a new steward of your teeth. Dentistry is Reconciliation.

the editor is catholic, so we had to slot in the catholic joke

None of our other routine appointments really fix our problems and allow us to start anew. The dentist is the only one brave enough to get in there and say “I am going to demonstrably improve your life and wellbeing within the next hour, making any steps you take afterwards potentially meaningful.” In contrast, a doctor tells you that your blood pressure is a little high and says to eat better. Okay. You go home and have a salad instead of steak. You go back to the doctor a year later. The blood pressure is still high. The doctor can’t do anything real for you; you just get the privilege of going on an increasingly convoluted and deteriorating saga of diets, exercise plans, and medications until you finally kick the bucket while depriving yourself of steaks along the way.

The dentist can physically remove issues and send you on your merry way with a problem unambiguously in the DONE pile, never to bother you again. How often in life do we ever fully get things checked off our list of tasks/problems? Thank your dentist office for stopping that cavity in #28 before you even had a chance to know it was something to worry about.

I don’t see the doctor giving me little goodies after!

Speaking of doctors, those rat bastards have never given me a goodie bag of useful and desirable products on my way out. As a child I got stickers at the doctor’s office. Who wants a damn sticker from the doctor?

I did a little math for you on how good the dentists’ goodies actually are: let’s assume at a minimum, the average dentist’s office gives you a toothbrush and a travel-sized toothpaste at your checkups:

Cost of toothbrush: ~$1.00 (priced as the cheapest single toothbrush retailed at Walmart, which is actually a generic brand and lower quality than what any dentist I know has ever provided, so this is a conservative estimate).

Cost of travel toothpaste: ~$1.00

Average American dentist visits: 2x per year (if your insurance does not cover that, this is not about you. this is the average)

Average American dental years: 78.11 years (avg life expectancy - avg first dentist visit age)

($1 + $1) * 2 * 78.11 = $312.44

this is what we call free money, babey!!!

In my most conservative average estimate, the dentist is giving you over $300 worth of goodies. Bear in mind, this does not factor in the dental savings over a lifetime if you actually use those products. Now, do not wha wha to me about the cost of dental insurance versus the value of that gift. The relevant comparison here isn’t whether the dentist is giving you enough free goodies to offset the cost of dental care. Don’t be stupid and dense; that would make no economic sense for the dentist. The relevant comparison is the dentist versus every other routine task we need to function. I don’t see my general doctor giving me $300 worth of goodies that will actually improve my health! I don’t see my eye doctor giving me $300 worth of free eye drops [maybe I can’t see it because they aren’t giving me enough goodies]! I don’t see my oil change guy giving me $300 of something that would make my car run longer! Thanks to my dentist, I don’t have to shell out to Big Toothbrush, and that’s something worth fighting for.

Email can’t find you at the dentist

Finally, we arrive at my biggest, most treasured reason for enjoying the dentist. Email cannot find me at the dentist. Text messages cannot find me at the dentist. That looming task I have to do for work cannot find me at the dentist. There is something so sublime about the absolute presentness of the dentist. When I am having my teeth cleaned, I quite literally cannot be doing anything else. I am stuck in a chair, I can’t use my arms, I can’t see a screen, I can’t talk, I can’t be productive in any conceivable way. It’s paradise.

Also, no one has ever disrespected the dentist as an excuse [this is not license for you to tell me about the one time your teacher yelled at you for missing a test at the dentist; please understand the concept of outliers]. “Why didn’t you answer my call?” “Oh, I was at the dentist.” It’s ironclad. It is an indisputably occupied moment of your time that others simply must schedule around. There is no “can you quickly send this email while you’re at the dentist?” We all understand that is a ludicrous proposition. The dentist is microdosing the freedom you feel when you are completely alone with absolutely no internet access. The more you allow yourself to sink into the chair and just zone out with no responsibilities while someone else drives the airplane, the more serene your experience will be.

i’m probably ripping off some IP for this image, so you better appreciate it

Your first retort to this might be: “how is this different than the doctor’s office?” Well, first of all, the dentist has never tried to harvest my blood for their test tube collection. Second, the doctor’s office is filled with incalculable amounts of downtime. In fact, you’re mostly just waiting for that 5-minute conversation with the nurse, and then you’re waiting for that 5-minute conversation with the doctor. In between are long stretches of nothing. Perfect for sending emails! [barf] At the doctor, I am only ever so briefly physically incapacitated from doing work. Yes, a few of their exams require my involvement, but mostly they’re just asking you for the three thousandth time how much you’ve exercised, and an ultramarathoner couldn’t receive approval for their answer. Then, they usher you out the door with a do-better-or-die warning, and I simply refuse to do better.

Back in paradise, the dentists asks whether I’ve flossed, and it will never be enough by their standards, but at least then they floss for you! Lo and behold! An actual solution to the problem! The doctor leaves me with both unresolved problems and I didn’t even get to rest during my time there. The dentist’s office is full of heroes who tangibly address my issues while I lean back in dimly lit room with the hum of machinery.

Remember not to bitch at me about that one unique experience at the dentist that makes your irrational fear totally oh so rational

The dentist is really one of the few moments of respite in the modern world. You are forced to slow down and do nothing, and I think that’s beautiful. My current dentist is my second favorite dentist I’ve ever had, but they even employ literal massage chairs in their rooms because they understand this is a spa experience. If you have ever gotten another spa treatment - facials, pedicures, manicures, massages, hair cuts, etc. - you have also experienced many of the discomforts of the dentist there (loud noises, machines, occasional pain/discomfort), but you have chosen to associate them with relaxation instead of anxiety. Yet another skill issue. Regard the dentist as a place for respite, and it will reward you in kind. And don’t forget to floss.

Don’t yell or whine at me in the comments, I’m not interested in that. Instead, regale me with answers to these questions:

1. What should go in a goodie bag at the doctor’s office?

2. What style of soft background music is optimal for the dentist’s office? I’m open to suggestions here.

3. Feelings on toffee?

4. What is the worst non-routine tooth experience you have had? Bonus points if it makes me cringe irl

spot me a dollar to buy some extra toothbrushes and travel toothpaste