Smile

by admin

December 1, 2019

485

• Candy
• Dentists

I had a strangely lackadaisical childhood, given that my mother was a highly qualified and motivated college professor of nutrition and dietetics. Seventeen years of teaching undergraduates and bringing up two boys had obviously exhausted her because by the time I came along, she was alarmingly laid back about minor things like dental hygiene and healthy diets. The siblings complained loudly and vociferously about this preferential treatment handed out to ‘the afterthought’ or ‘the mistake’ as they fondly referred to me. I rarely brushed twice a day. Once in roughly twenty four hours was considered a proud achievement. The best use of a full tube of toothpaste had to be squeezing it out in thick, gooey lines on to my mum’s precious rose plants one sleepy afternoon. My mum woke from her nap, sniffing the air. The smell of Binaca toothpaste led her to the horrific sight of pink rosebuds and green leaves lavishly decorated with the chalky white lines – which I had fondly imagined to be a fine expression of my latent artistic talent. It was possibly the only time she came close to spanking me. She didn’t. More howls of protest from the siblings. Unfair, biased. Whatever. No one listened to them anyway.

The result of all this loving neglect was that I spent the first six years of my life crunching my way through the virulently coloured and suspiciously flavoured candy of the seventies – God Bless The Kids who grew up unhampered by worries of what they threw down their gullets . It wasn’t all bad – I learnt basic economics, rudimentary algebra and portfolio management from my forays to the corner sweet shop. My daily candy allowance was ten paise. Left over change was expected or I’d better have a good reason. The oblong toffee in the dark green wrapper and the eclair were the most expensive, the kidney shaped orange and lemon boiled sweets without a wrapping, the cheapest. Jujubes, Nutties and the round Parlé orange boiled sweets only came in packets and needed financial backing from the pater. I quickly figured out that spending daily on the cheap sweets left me with a two paise bit to pocket and three paise to hand back to mum. The money I pocketed was saved up for that fancy toffee every couple of days.

I think she knew the scam that was being played and allowed it, in the hope it would spark a greater interest in mathematics. Sadly, a hope that was never realised. It didn’t do my teeth much good either. Crunching my way through all this hard sugar inevitably led to my first trip to the dentist. Even that imminent but as yet unknown threat didn’t bother me that first day. I remember Mum and I shopping for barley sugar candy canes before we visited the dentist. Those candy canes were delicious. They were available at only one shop in Jew Town in Fort Cochin. They must have been imported because I’ve never seen them again after we left Cochin. They were pale yellow, twisted like a corkscrew and as long as my arm. Each came wrapped in cellophane. I can’t describe the taste forty years later – sweet and sour and earthy all at once.

We had an appointment with the best dentist in town. He was a kind, gentle and soft spoken man who also happened to be my school friend’s dad. He tut tutted over the state of my teeth, pronounced a grim diagnosis of five or six cavities that needed attention and my thus far carefree candy land existence came to an abrupt, shattering stop.

There was no pain medication. None that I can recall. There was a nurse who held me down while dear kind Dr. J, apologising profusely and trying to soothe me, got on with the drilling and filling. My school friend came running from their adjoining home at the sound of my howls. He spent, as he told me gleefully on several future occasions, the best hour of his life, watching the torture.

Dr J was the first, and the best, of a long series of dentists, my faithful companions from childhood into adolescence and adulthood. Crooked teeth, impacted wisdom teeth (three), exposed nerve endings, root canals, caps and crowns. Been there, done that.

Plunging blood pressure, panicked adrenaline injections, severe infection following an extraction (worse pain than labour, no one will convince me otherwise). Done and dusted.

In short,  I have run the gauntlet. Fought the good fight. My childhood of candy crime will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have made my peace with my fate. I have also toughened up. These days, visits to the dentist are challenges I throw at myself. Don’t clench the fists, no curling of toes, not a peep of sound. Absolutely no adrenaline requirements. What am I, an amateur? A novice, a rookie? Ha. I laugh in the face of the masked dentist. Figuratively.

So how come I felt sick in a dentist’s office this morning? I was not in the chair, it wasn’t my impacted wisdom tooth that was being pulled out, not my mouth that was being poked and prodded for interminable minutes. And yet, for the first time in a long time, I felt my blood pressure drop a bit. I even got queasy and light headed when the drill and pliers appeared. I wasn’t the patient but it felt like my tooth was being jiggled and drilled into, my mouth that felt the pressure.

I’ll tell you why. That tooth was the first time something was being extracted from a being almost entirely of my making – my son. Unlike my own dear mum, I was a paranoid mother. I dragged that kid off to the dentist almost as soon as his baby teeth came in. My reprehensible behaviour is vindicated. At the age of 21, he has never had a cavity. But even the most ruthless mom-dentist nexus couldn’t stop the wisdom tooth impacting. And so here we were, him calm and relaxed, me a mass of nerves.

I could have done with a shot of adrenaline. Or vodka. All I got was a Gerroff Mom, and What are you obsessing about – it’s just a tooth.

At the end, the dentists laughed at my weird eagerness to take that tooth away. I didn’t tell them that no one had presented me with my own teeth, no one had made a little ceremony of handing the cleaned up offender to me. Things were far more clinical in the good old seventies and eighties. The most you got was a sympathetic glance…directed at your long suffering parent.

Well, this was as good as one of mine. I was going to take it home, ignoring my son’s eye rolling, and gloat over it. It was a symbol – of all the dentists I’ve known, all the time I’ve spent supine in chairs, mouth wide open, aching jaw, dry lips, aaahhh. My son may have a swollen jaw for the next few days. I sympathise with him. I do. But still…it felt like I laid some ghosts of teeth past to rest today. Dear Dr J, the nameless doctor who administered the most painful injection of adrenaline to a passed out fifteen year old with shaky hands, Dr B, Dr A, all my dentists. I remember them with a certain perverse pride and affection. And I still remember my six year old self, tears pouring down her cheeks, angry and frightened, as a little boy with hair and eyes like Bruce Lee, sat in his father’s swivel chair, laughing his head off.