Do you remember your first dentist’s visit? I sure do. I had just had my checkup and was referred to see a dentist. I went there to see if I had any cavities. I remember we got there about 30 minutes before my appointment. The dentist’s office looked very plain with all the usual stuff. It had a bunch of magazines stacked up in the pile.
I immediately went to the pile to investigate, maybe I would find a comic book or something. To my surprise, there was a bunch of boring medical magazines. At least, boring to a 7-year-old. Since there wasn’t anything else there to do, I decided to give the magazines a try. They featured a bunch of medical equipment and a few articles about new medications.
I must admit I was a little bit of a nerd. So, if some magazine had some articles that featured something new to me that I could learn from, I was bound to give them a try. I kept on reading and found a couple of articles to be interesting. Not that I was actually following what was being stated in the article, the thing is the article had a lot of pictures about some dental procedures, and I guess I found them to be kind of cool.
One of them was braces. I never wore braces although I saw one of my brother’s do. The article was about some transparent-looking braces that are very standard now, but that were quite the novelty back then. I was used to seeing a lot of kids at my school with braces that looked that they had a bunch of metal in their mouths. I told my mother, “If I get braces today, I want them to be like these.” I told her and pointed to the new braces.
My mother just smiled, and I took that as a “yes.” I had heard a lot of nasty stories about going to the dentist, but this was tuning out to be totally different. It was very quiet, and when I arrived, another kid was getting a cleanup. It turns out that when he finished, he came out smiling with a lollypop he was told to not eat until later. No tears, no screaming, nothing. I went in and when I came out, I was told I didn’t have any cavities!
I was relieved that day, but when I got home, I asked my mother how come pets didn’t have to go to the dentist. I mean, their teeth seemed to be clean all the time (at least they looked that way). My mother just told me that it was because they were animals and they didn’t need it. Everything made sense until I found the following video. It’s about a man and his cat. His cat is not scared of the dentist at all… Hey! Is that a toothbrush?
