Why Dentists are Dentists: The True Story

By R.E. Bekah

Why Dentists are Dentists: The True Story
Dentists: I decided today, after many years of observation and thought, that I now know why dentists become dentists. No, it is not because their deep down desire is to spend their life in peoples’ mouths. I mean, really.

When you ask a kid what he wanted to be when he grew up, you’d hear these responses:

“I wanna be a fireman.”
“I wanna be a doctuh.”
“I wanna be my Dad.”
“I wanna be a pwince.”

Or for the girls:

“I wanna be a nurse.”
“I wanna be a doctuh.”
“I wanna be a pwincess.” (To which parents always respond with the incredibly original line of
“Oh honey, you are a princess already.”)
“I wanna be a singer.”
“I wanna be a Mommy.”

Have you ever heard a child say, “I wanna be a dentist.”? I didn’t think so. It’s something that develops.

Once a person gets to the age where they’re considering the fact that they just need someone to listen to them after being deprived from that as a child, they start considering their options. Once they find out how expensive therapists are, they reconsider their options. And once they make their yearly trip to the dentist, the little eureka bulb goes off in their head.

*ding*

“What if” they think, “instead of paying a therapist to have me lay on a couch drilling me for information while they listen to my every thought, inkling, and feeling”…they get excited… “What if people were to pay me to have them lay in a chair, while I drill them, as I tell them whatever I feel the need to share at that point in time?

Of course, it’s not purely selfish. No, no, no, no, no. They ask you about your life too. They get that drill right down there in that nerve, and then turn it on until it’s making that high-pitched sound that rivals your Aunt Mildred’s fingernails on the metal cookie pan. At that moment, is when he decides to become interested in what’s going on in your life.

“So, what area do you come from?”

What area do I come from? At this point, with the pain of both your chow chomper, and your ears, you’re having trouble remembering what language you speak, let alone what area you come from. Eventually though, he’ll stop drilling to give you a moment of respite. And to pick up his metal water gun, yet another one of his torture tools, and proceeds to squirt water that is cold enough to freeze lava from Mt. Helen, directly into the exact spot of exposed nerve that he was just drilling. It is somewhere in between the drill and the water that your subconscious somehow transfers the information back to your brain, to your vocal chords, and to your ever-so-tender mouth to give him the answer he was asking for.

However, whatever that language was that came from your mouth, it wasn’t English. It was a language that Dentists have created.

See, along with that deep-seeded need to be heard and listened to, they also had secret longings of the linguistic sort. You see, somewhere deep inside as a little dentist-to-be, they wanted to create a new language. And they did.

Words that seem easy and clear to you when they enter your brain, feel and sound like monkey lingo when they exit your speaker. How?

Well, I’m certainly not a dentist, but somehow for that however-long-it-takes-until-he’s-done-with-you, your dentist has added yet another number to his long list of conquests. Without knowing it, you have learned another language, which somehow is only activated until the time that his language drug wears off.

The conclusion: For those of us who have not been able to go through life without the services of a dentist, however painful, uncomfortable, embarrassing, or otherwise demeaning it is, they are a necessity; An unfortunate one, but a necessity nonetheless. So, for the relief, reprieve, re-teething, re-rooting, or re-shaping that we may need, we must resign ourselves to pacify the dentists with their not-so-innocent pleasures that make looking at tooth-rot, root-rot, gum-rot, and other-rots somehow worth it.

And mothers, fathers, if you ever hear those alarming five words: “I wanna be a dentist.” Then I’d say that your child has way deeper-rooted problems than you may think.

Pun intended.

About R.E. Bekah:
I was homeschooled through the entirety of my academia, and currently work actively in a family business. I enjoy putting to paper (or keyboard) the thoughts and observations I have of my own experiences and those around me. This article on dentistry was one such example of a slightly off-kilter point of view of things, which occured to me after much experience with dentists, and 2+ years as an orthodontic patron (Thanks Mom & Dad!). I’m currently writing an inspirational fiction novel, as well as putting together a collection of stories–most of which have been either based on true events (i.e. Dentists), or inspired by true events–that I’ve experienced and seen.

To contact R.E. Bekah use email: justafriend (at) live.com