Now my dentist visits consist of blood and guts. No, really. I got my implant -yay- back in May and ever since then it seems like I'm going to be bleeding when I leave a visit. Such was the result of my visit today, clearing my dear implant of any foreign objects that might cross its path.
But! NONE of this is the point. I'm writing today about the peculiarity of the dentist's chair. What an awkward place to be! I'm laying there half-stoned clutching desperately onto a shirt-tail or my own thumbs or the inside of my pocket. It squeaks--no matter what, even if I just flex a butt cheek, it squeaks. And looming to my left, power drills the size of Montana are about to bore their ways through my gums, and saws with teeth sharper than the sharpest shark (what?) are ready to wipe away the remainder of my pitiful teeths.
Normally, when the tools are silenced and the suction has suctioned out all the blood and guts it can find, I'm left with the sound of the second hand on the drug-company-sponsored clock hanging over my head. Tick, tick, tick: Jeanna, you're one second closer to your imminent mouth-altering demise.
Today, however, my dentist was WAY COOL. We were the only team left in the room, and she put on some alt-rock Pandora pretty loud. We were jamming to The Fray and Rob Thomas and Kelly Clarkson and... and. Oh. SHIT. Jimmy Eat m-f-ing World.
Yes, that's right: A Praise Chorus started blaring through her laptop's speakers and I was stuck with a drill in my mouth and a finger up my nose (or so it felt). A Praise Chorus! Of all of the songs in the world, WHY THIS ONE?! Cabral joked with me that perhaps at some point in my life I was hypnotized to COMPULSIVELY DANCE LIKE A MANIAC any time I heard this song... a hypothesis that doesn't seem quite off. My feet, they start moving. My arms, they do some throwback-monkey-white-girl dance. My ass shakes and... and my head... my head bobs... MUST. NOT. BOB. HEAD. Large drill inside mouth. Must not move... Can't... Must fight... the dancing... FEELING......
And just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore, Jimmy Eat World wanted to fall in love tonight for the last time. For three and a half grueling minutes, my need for dancing had taken over every non-numb part of my body. And now it was over.
Thank God, right?
WRONG. Because what happened next was even more excruciating than I could have ever predicted.
Yes, that's right: VINDICATED started blaring through her laptop's speakers, and I was stuck with no earplugs and no drill and no saw and no talking and not even a second hand to block it out. WHY?! THIS?! ONE?!
There I was. Stuck in the dentist's chair. The dentist asked me how I was doing. How could I tell her that the most horrifying song in on the planet had just come on her Pandora and she needed to push the Thumbs Down ASAP? I could barely even garble out a "mhhbbgggsrrhh" through the muck and mire before she turned on the drill again, not loud enough to dull the pain of Dashboard Confessional penetrating my ears.
Stuck in the dentist's chair. Sounds like a good review of a horrible, horrible song.
