Better Living Through Chemistry

My teeth are a mess. Mostly due to my wisdom teeth who, now that I’m 45, have decided to start moving around again. The end result of this latest bit of dental restlessness is a cracked tooth and an impending trip to the dentist. One would think with a name like “Wisdom Teeth”, the damned things would do more than just jack up people’s mouths.

You are not sorry, Nazi swine!

I don’t hate dentists, but I fear them in the same way I fear Black Widows. They’re fine when they’re doing their thing and I’m doing mine and never the twain shall meet, but when we close ranks, things get ugly.

When I was a kid, I was watching TV when, out of the top of my eye, I caught something black descending from the ceiling. Turned out it was a widow and she stopped about six inches from my face. The chair was against the wall so I couldn’t move and she just hung there. She held all the cards and she damned well knew it. All the fires of Hell burned in her eight beady little eyes. A stray breeze would have blown her straight onto my nose where she would have gleefully injected her hated venom. Needless to say, I freaked the hell out and started screaming.

Ultimately, my mom smashed the thing with a copy of TV Guide (yes, this was a while ago, why do you ask?) and I developed a deep-seated fear of Black Widows in particular and spiders in general.

Whoops. Wrong Black Widow. Much easier on the eyes than the spider, though, so you might want to skip the next picture.

And a foot across it was if it was a day! Full of fangs dripping poison that burned holes in my very soul!

I can’t point to any one time when I’ve been to the dentist and it’s been quite as gnarly as a Black Widow inches from my face, but there’s just something about people messing around in my mouth that fills me with the same dread panic you get when you face mighty Cthulhu or Black Widows. So, since this is the modern age and every problem can be fixed with a pill, my dentist prescribed me diazepam, better know as Valium.

So, I’m about to embark on my first journey down chemical way. I’ve already warned my work that I’ll be sending out some rambling, insane message later tonight talking about shoes and bugs in my head wearing shoes and how the Kaiser wants my apricots, so I’m good to go on that point. I’ve got a ride to and from the dentist, so I’m good to go there. Now all I’ve got to do is deal with the actual time in the dentist’s chair while he (or she) is going medieval on my mouth.

Hopefully, the diazepam will kick the hell out of my heebie-jeebies and this ordeal will be over quickly and with a minimum amount of me have a total freak out.

Trust me, in this case, denial is best.

So, wish me luck.