Six months after I last announced ‘I must go for a checkup’, I finally made my long overdue visit to my brother’s dental surgery yesterday. I’m rather phobic about dental treatment, so I haven’t been looking forward to it to say the least.
When my name was called, I entered the surgery as if being summoned to my execution. Big brother arranged my notes on the worktop and invited me to take my seat in the dreaded chair. I tried not to look at the instruments lined up on the tray in front of me and waited to see if he would do his “Is it safe?” Laurence Olivier in ‘Marathon Man’ impersonation. He didn’t.
“Ah, so you’ve finally made it,” he said. “It’s been six years since you were last here. Tut, tut.”
“Six years…SIX YEARS? It can’t be!” I squealed. “It’s only two or, er, three. Four at the very most. Let me see those bloody notes…” To my horror the last entry was dated 2004. My eyes then alighted on another source of horror. “Oh no! There’s that awful photo…” It was a closeup photo of the stump of one of my previously beautiful front teeth after it came into contact with the bonnet of a car whilst I was riding my bike, back in 1998.
“Terrible,” said big brother shaking his head.
“I know”, I replied. “It’s not the tooth, though, it’s the closeup of my moustache I can’t bear.”
“Och, you,” he said, snapping his rubber gloves on. “Open wide.”
There followed a distressing series of scraping noises inside my head, as the dental probe re-acquainted itself with my gnashers for the first time in six years. The loudness of the noises made me finally understand one aspect of the rationale behind the infamous tooth-mounted hearing aid. Only one aspect, though.
Once it was all over, the verdict came as a total shock. “Well, amazingly, it all looks pretty good in there,” said big bruv. “Gold star. Don’t leave it so long next time, though…”