I sat in the dentist’s chair wiping my sweaty palms over and over on my jeans. I started doing it from necessity but it turned into a nervous tic. After seven minutes my palms felt raw.
The dental hygienist walked in. Her blond hair was teased up high and I could see bright pink lipstick through her mask. “Well hello there, haven’t seen you in a while!” She said cheerfully.
“Hi, sorry. I’m trying to be better” I said. “But everything feels ok”
“Oh good” She sat down next to me. She asked me a few small talk questions: How do you like living in the city, what’s new, how’s work. Nothing too challenging. Then she asked me to open my mouth, and she held up a metal scraper. She put it against my teeth and started working.
It was quiet in the office, only a few other people were there. I couldn’t talk with her working in my mouth and immediately started worrying that I was boring her. I didn’t want her to think I was some jerk who didn’t want to make small talk, even with my mouth full of weapon-like instruments. So I said:
“Moow maar uurr rilrun?”
“Oh they are really something. They are just driving me crazy these days. You know the older one finally stopped saying she wants to kill herself, but you wanna know what happened to the younger one?” She paused to build drama and I nodded my open mouth. “Well she’s in high school now, and I guess she was kissing some guy. Next thing I know, she’s got mouth herpes!”
I choked a little and she took the scraper out for a moment. “Gosh” I said.
“Oh you got that right. Herpes. You should have seen it. It was horrible. It was disgusting. It was all over her lips and the roof of her mouth! So I said, I said: Now don’t go telling kids at school that you’ve got mouth herpes. Tell them its hoof and mouth disease, they don’t know the difference.” She started working on my molars.
“Well does she listen to me? No. So everyone at school knows” I politely decide not to point out that it’s early August, and what school is she in anyway?
She continues, “A few days later, someone has put up a facebook page for her herpes! It says all these awful things like she sucks ____ and eats ______ and that’s how she got herpes in her mouth.” I nod again. “She’s so upset, not to mention the herpes is just everywhere now, she can’t eat or smoke or anything. Lucky for her, I’ve got the best psychic ever. So my sister and I go to the psychic, and she tells us who did the facebook page, and you’ll never believe this…”
“Errrg?” I say.
“No! It was her BEST FRIEND! That little bitch, she acted all nice and like she was such a good friend. So I tell my daughter that she’s gotta start a facebook page saying her friend has herpes too! Hahahaha!” I could taste blood in my mouth.
You know all the kids are going to get it anyway, the joke’s on them. You know canker sores are herpes right? Did you ever have canker sores?” She took her torture devices out of my mouth so I could answer.
“No?” I asked.
“Oh that’s good because that’s mouth herpes too. So yea, anyways, she’s got the herpes now but I’m getting her the pills and I’m just telling her she learned an important lesson…”
As the hygienist prattled on I marveled at how she completely lacked the ability to read people’s reactions. Maybe my open mouth prevented me from looking as horrified as I felt, but I suspect that even if I stood dry heaving and sobbing “No, please stop talking” this lady would keep talking.
When she finished cleaning my teeth I stood up and tried not to make eye contact.
“Here’s your toothbrush” she said “and remember: more flossing. And canker sores are mouth herpes too.”
“Oh I’ll remember,” I said. “Thank you SO MUCH.”
I guess it isn’t surprising that a mom that seems to worry that her recently enrolled in high school daughter can no longer smoke would suggest that her daughter create a false facebook page to screw with the girl that screwed with her.
There were a lot of clues that this woman might have…different…priorities than I do.