Froggy's World - Alms for Oblivion (Weblog)

Half-tooths and crowning glories
15th November, 2006

The fish are still there, swimming across the ceiling of my dentist's surgery, diving behind coral reefs and slicing through sapphire-blue seas. It must be a year since I reclined in the chair and stared up at the flatscreen monitor in which they swam. Someone, I presume, had convinced the dentist that moving images of fish had a calming effect on patients.
They don't, of course. The only thing that has a calming effect, at least on me, is a significant quantity of prescription drugs. I'm tempted to tell him that if pictures of swimming fish did actually calm people, he should have several flatscreens installed in the surgery reception area where patients were handed their bills.
There are many way of starting a day badly, and one of them is to break a tooth before you have even had breakfast. There I lay, seriously contemplating placing my feet on the floor and assuming an upright position when I was aware of something rolling around in my mouth.
It couldn't be, I thought. How I managed to break a tooth in my sleep remains a mystery. Perhaps I'd taken to wandering through the apartment in the small hours and attempting to bite pieces out of doors, tables and chairs, inflicting serious dental damage in the process.
I looked at the half tooth, wrapped in a tissue and put it on the bedside table. I shuffled to the bathroom, dark clouds of depression gathering overhead, and I looked in the mirror, focusing on the gap that now existed in my smile, or what would have been my smile if I hadn't been grimacing. Brad Pitt, eat your heart out, I thought as I looked at the reflection: a man with his hair standing on end, unshaven, bleary-eyed and with a gap in his front teeth.
I rang my dentist, who was Away. There must be a luxury beach resort fringed by palm trees and turquoise lagoons and adjoined by an 18-hole golf course somewhere called Away, for whenever I am in dire need of a dentist or doctor, their receptionists, those guardians of the gate, tell me that they are not available.
   "Where is he?"
   "Away," they say.
   "When will he be bakth?" I asked this time. The loss of the tooth had affected my speech and my tongue had assumed a will of its own. As a result, I had now developed a dithtinct lithp.
   "Next week," she said.
   "Wontherful," I said and made an appointment to see one of his colleagues.
   "How's your morning?" asked one of my co-workers as I walked into the office that day.
   "Fanbloodythwathtic," I said, spraying the room with saliva and retreating to my corner. I was starting to sound like Daffy Duck.
My ever-fertile imagination by now had conjured up scenarios in which what was left of my tooth was being extracted, dentist's pliers gleaming in the fluorescent light as the fish circled above on the flatscreen monitor. What would be next? False teeth? It was the beginning of the end. My grandfather had false teeth, which he removed when watching television. Invariably, he ended up sitting on them and had done this so frequently that they had gnawed a hole in the upholstery of his favourite chair. Was this to be my fate, sitting in front of telly while my teeth ate my chair?
"He'll fix you up with a crown when he comes back," said my dentist's colleague. I had heard tales of parents selling their firstborn into slavery to pay for a crown. By the time the crown is fitted, this one tooth will have cost about the same as half of a new car. Health insurance? Of course - I can rest easy now in the knowledge that if dentists' fees had not risen since 1932, I would be generously reimbursed.
My man returns next week, suitably tanned and relaxed, I'm sure. I will then renew my acquaintance with the fish on the ceiling. I can harthly waitht.

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