I am filled with emotions which are difficult to express.
“I don’t like it” I said it in the summer of 1992.
“I HATE IT” I said it for the first time in the summer of 1994 and then repeated many times, each time wondering why do people play kho-kho. No no, it isn’t kho-kho that I hate. What I hate is… going to the dentist. I don’t have the patience to type the dentist saga and the kho-kho-dentist relation in detail. Well… I don’t have anything against dentists, they are all nice people; I believe they have lot of patience too. It isn’t the fear of pain. It’s not their instruments either. It’s all about the sound…. Uffff!! That wacky noise which one hears when those drilling machines make contact with the teeth. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
In the summer of 2009, I repeat it “I hate going to dentist.”
This also reminds me of a poem(title same as that of this post) by Ogden Nash which I read in high school, each word of which expresses what I feel everytime I listen the word “dentist”.
One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.
And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopan.
Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
But the one that is both is dental.
It is hard to be self possessed
With your jaw digging into your chest,
so hard to retain calm
When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm,
So hard to give your ususal cheerful effect of benignity
When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity
And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on
And it is cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve on your head that aren't being irked on.
Oh some people are unfortunate to be worked on by thumbs,
And others have things done to their gums,
And your teeth are supposed to being polished
But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
And the circumstances that adds to your terror
Is that it's all done with a mirror,
Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
>But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you do when try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa
And then at last he says, That will be all, but it isn't because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
With something I suspect is generally used to put shine a horse's hoof,
And you totter to your feet and think, Well it's over now and after all it was only this once,
And he says come back in three monce.
And this O Fate, is I think the most vicious that thou ever sentest,
That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
When the chief reason he wants his teeth to be in good condition is so that he won't have to go the dentist.
