HUMOUR AND DESPAIR
It Can Be Very Hindering to Be An Idiot
Especially at the dentist
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“You need a crown,” said my dentist.
And guess where my brain went? I thought he meant that I deserved some sort of medal for being such a good patient and not complaining about the injection or the numbness.
Or maybe it was the way I was being so genteel in the way I was discreetly dabbing a handkerchief to my mouth to make sure I wasn’t dribbling.
Yes. My brain thought he meant I deserved a crown like one of these:
Life as an idiot would be so much easier if people didn’t use the same words to mean different things.
Of course, he meant a dental crown and a £900 fee because, let’s face it, someone is going to have to pay for the running costs on that flash Mercedes in the car park. And it might as well be me.
So there I was this morning, having my shiny new crown fitted. In my mouth, not on my head, when he confused me again. Twice.
First, he confused me with the whole cement thing.
“I’m just going to put the crown in without cementing it, to see if it is a good fit,” he said. And my mind turned somersaults trying to get around the whole “cement” issue as I envisaged a miniature cement mixer and something toxic being put into my mouth that I might accidentally swallow.
Just as I was coming to terms with THAT idea, he threw this curveball:
“Is it rubbing against your front tooth?”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The front one because you haven’t got a back one,” he said.
At which point, I got super confused, and was none the wiser.
Did he mean the tooth to the left or right of the one with the uncemented crown? And would that be his right/left or my right/left?
And “front” and “back” would suggest a tooth in front of the one he meant or behind the one he meant. And I had to do a few mental gymnastics to rule out the possibility that I had 3 rows of teeth and had somehow not noticed.
By the time I had ruled that out as an idiot idea, a few seconds had passed, and I knew he was waiting for an answer. So, I gave up trying to understand which tooth he was on about.
It was a yes or no question. So I went with “No”, because, to be honest, I was feeling quite negative about the whole experience at this point.
I still have no idea what he meant about me not having a back tooth. Because I’ve just checked in the mirror and there’s definitely a tooth on either side of the one he has now cemented in.
So I’m beginning to have doubts about my dentist. Maybe he’s the idiot.
Although that seems unlikely, what with him having a Mercedes and all.
