Deep Cleaning My Ass

Sorry. I deliberately left out proper punctuation on the title. ;) But seriously... So this morning I go into the dentist for "deep cleaning." Boy did I have no idea what I was in for.

In "Bill Cosby, Himself" the great Cos' tells this elaborate, 8-minute story about his trips to the dentist. "my moush... my moush es on fiber!" I always thought it was funny, but now I GET it. That was some ol' booolsh**t! And I don't even have major dental problems. Just some Tuna "tar-tar", if you will, here and there. So I'm thinking "Ok, cool. Clean me up, doc!" Then I sit down with the little Korean lady, and out comes this 3" needle. ???? Ok, I'll deal with that. Since I knew it was meant for numbing, I figured there was some sort of reward at the end. After jabbing that into my upper and lower gums, out comes the 2nd needle. Woah. Shorter, darker, more pokes.

As the numbness starts to set in, she fires up her power drills, and puts on a mask, a pair of glasses, and another pair of microscope lenses on TOP of her glasses. Like she's about to break into a vault at the Smithsonian from an underground sewage system. At this point in the story, if you have small children, you might want them to leave the room. What happens next was probably something that they only do at Gitmo.

Although my mouth is numb, my ears and eyes still work, which is probably worse because now you're only left to imagine the pain. What I heard, I can only describe as a combination of an illegal chop shop and a hungry dog chewing a rock with gravy on it. Scrape here, screech there, drill here, machine motor over there, the dentist's seat adjusting, a grown man scream down the hall. And then my eyes... Mis Ojos, Dios mio! I could see that poor Korean woman was rocking back and forth like she was whittling my initials into my molars. (that might be kinda hot, I'm gonna have to patent that!) At one point she began sweating, and grunting, and stopped to drink some Gatorade.

Then there's the "Going-To-Meet-Jesus" light staring you in the face the whole time. And to make matters worse, between the light and my face was the dentist office "Death Mist" - a combination of water, blood, bone, and your spirit leaving your body. This combination is one of life's best reminders of our mortality. So I'm thinking at any minute she's gonna break something and stab me in the thorax and I bleed to death in front of Kung Fu Panda Express, ova here. Either that or I choke horribly on a tooth that accidentally dislodges. I even started wondering whether or not I had on clean underwear. Which honestly, my fear almost answered that for me with a big fat "No."

So finally, as I was giving in to the light, waving to our Lord and Savior... the procedure was over. An hour had passed, and she handed me a small glass filled with antibacterial rinse that was going to cost me $25 for the bottle - whether I liked it or not. I tried my best to swash the liquid around, but somehow it managed to embarassingly escape from my numb lips. I felt like Steve Martin as Ruprect in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

But anyway, to sum it all up, I'm going to do it again in 2 weeks!

that's it for your boy....

Peace and Fish Grease!