Dentist

You know how when you're at the dentist, they always talk to you and expect you to answer when your mouth is stuffed full of metal instruments/cotton/toothpaste? My dentists are like that times ten.

First of all, I needed a small cavity filled. The dentist walks in and tries to make small talk by asking me what school I go to. Apparently, he went to the same school and spent the next five minutes asking me if any of his teachers were still teaching. I didn't know anyone he was talking about.

After that, as he's preparing his very large, scary-looking drill, he decides that he needs to tell me about his obsession with the world champion hot dog eater who can't participate because he was arrested (or was arrested because he participated illegally- I'm not sure). He proceeded to describe the man's hot dog eating method, complete with dramatic hand gestures and sound effects. If I'm ever in a hot dog eating contest, I now know that I have to break the hot dog in half, shove it into my mouth, dip the bun in water, and inhale it.

Later, my mouth is jammed full of cotton and he's using a jackhammer-like instrument on my tooth. He decides that it's been quiet far too long, and he needs to ask me who does my braces.

My orthodontist is an Indian man with a very hard to pronounce last name. I can't even say it correctly when my mouth is able to function normally. Coupled with the mounds of cotton and the loud jackhammer device, my answer probably sounded something like "krliscxhmnuhn", mixed in with some spitting and moaning.

After the filling is done, he sends in the hygienist to clean my teeth. She was probably the most talkative woman I'd ever met. Ever.

After a brief discussion on my Halloween costume ("The Mad Hatter? Like, the Johnny Depp version? OHMIGOSH COOL. I saw this one movie with him..."), she decided that she needed to tell me what her children were for Halloween fifteen or twenty years ago. Her youngest child, when he was three, was dressed as a crayon. The costume was made of felt and was tight around his legs, so that he fell flat on his face each time he tried to bend his knees to get up the steps to a house. Her three sons were all power rangers for two or three years in a row.

After that, we were back on the topic of movies and had a discussion about horror movies and her children's experiences with them.

Later, as she's flossing my teeth, the dentist has nothing else to do so he comes back and leans against the counter and makes conversation with the hygienist about some documentary with a man who lived with monkeys for a few months and how he was amazed at their instinct.

This reminded the hygienist of a video that a co-worker showed her of an elephant giving birth, leading to an extremely detailed account of what happened.

"So THEN the baby elephant came out dead, so she started turning him upside-down with her trunk and putting her foot in his chest and moving him around, and he started coughing up all this slimy green flem and then he was breathing and he started walking! Isn't it amazing that she knew just what to do?"

Of course, since she was working in my mouth the entire time, the only thing I could do was to sit there and try to keep the horrified expression off my face.