Some families have special days out to places like the beach or the fairground, you know, something to do as a family unit that we will treasure forever and perhaps someday tell our kids, or someone else's, I'm not too fussed. But not my family. Our idea of a family outing (Not that kind of outing, though that would be interesting depending on what you accuse them of. My personal favourite is witchcraft - you can use the pyre for a good barbecue afterwards.) comes in the forms of trips to the dentist. I suppose it makes life a bit easier if we all just got our annual checkups over and done with in one shot, but it is really overkill to make it a family event of discomfort and potential pain. Coincidentally this is not unlike the experience of watching an episode of Gunther's ER on SBS or being forced to sit through four consecutive screenings of Two and a Half Men reruns that have accumulated on your hard disk recorder because your dad insists on watching it at a later date. Delete them already!
Okay, now to stop my whinging for now, for I have no real reason to. For my teeth are the best in the land as far as I'm concerned. Despite the obvious beatings I will endure after she reads this, the dentist did comment that I have much 'better teeth than my sister'. So I did the only thing a sensible person in my position could do - walk out of the room with the biggest grin on my face. I continued this pattern of stupidity for the rest of the day, winning arguments simply by flashing a grin. Must remind myself to buy a mouthguard for future encounters, lest I wake up in the middle of the night with a cricket bat in my mouth.
I firmly believe the secret to good dental health lies not just in regular brushing and rinsing habits, but being scared into the entire routine at an early age. I have vague memories of the mobile dentistry showcase coming to my primary school in Year Two like some sort of mobile torture roadshow here to make your afternoon miserable. Apart from that, you would have to factor in the competency, patience and sobriety of the dentist. Going through a hundred prep aged kids probably isn't the best way to relax, and at that age you really wonder if that drill could take out a good chunk of your cheek. Fortunately I have no such problems now as I breeze through checkup time and come out smiling as if it were a competition. As they say, winners are grinners. Or is it the other way round?
But of course karma, the great equaliser struck back when I was promptly crushed by a falling piano outside the dental clinic.
Well I sort of lied about that one. But having your football team lose to your sister's football team falls within the same area of concern. Is this the point where I lose all faith in humanity? Is there a black hole waiting for me the moment I get up off the couch? Oh that's right, it's just a game. But what a hurtful one it is.
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