Turn a little to the left for me
A visit to the dentist
Turn a little to the left for me. No, your other left, that’s it. Remember, raise your left hand if you need me to stop. Is that a little sensitive? That’s number 22, the one we’re watching. I’ll have him take a look at it.
J has been cleaning my teeth three times a year for over ten years now. She’s between my children in age, and she’s someone I’ve grown to appreciate over the years. I ask her what’s new.
Well, my oldest is dragging his feet getting his driver’s license. We’ve even offered to buy him a car as soon as he gets it. He says he’d be a lot more incentivised to get a driver’s license if the car was already in the driveway.
Are teenagers today so used to having no agency that they don’t recognize it when it's offered? So used to instant gratification that they can't imagine it delayed?
And my husband’s looking for a new job. He works for a small aerospace company, but as soon as he joined, they got sold to a bigger company and it not the same.
I’m not looking for a new job. I like my job.
One of the things I like about this practice is the low staff turnover. J, and S, the office manager, have been here as long as I’ve been coming here.
We’ve turned over dental assistants, but only for good reasons like they're going on to get more education. I’m lucky. Most people working in our messed up health care system are having a hard time right now.
J’s mother’s a nurse, so she knows. I’m able to squeeze in that I try to my part my being respectful to all my healthcare providers; that I hope to come across as articulate, polite, and pleasant. That, and being an older white man, for sure, helps me get good care. People of color, with imperfect English perhaps, or with less education, are not getting that standard of care.
At weekends I volunteer giving free dental care to immigrant communities, mostly women, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Mexican, from everywhere. I speak a few words of Spanish, is all, but just that I try to communicate with them, they are so, so grateful for that.
And I’m so, so grateful for the turn that this conversation has taken. We always find ourselves hoping that the people we like will share our values. We want to move the conversation along, to get past the small talk, to find out what makes the other person tick. J is chatty, so I know a lot about her, but I guess it’s a convention to stay away from anything that might be controversial, and while immigrants are certainly controversial at this point in history, they are perhaps less so after the election just two days earlier in which an immigrant had become mayor of New York.
I’m flying to San Francisco this weekend to visit my uncle. It’s been a while since I was there. I was about twenty, so twenty five years ago. I went with my mother. Her brother told us to take public transportation. That’s way beyond her comfort zone, she can’t even read a map, my mother, but I got it figured out.
She had to come in here for some work last week and I had to give her turn by turn directions. I even went out on break and moved her car next to mine to make it easier for her to follow me home. She was glued to my bumper all the way. I could see her there in my mirror, gripping the wheel, hands at 10 to 2.
It’s a pretty one-sided conversation when I have a mouth full of scrapers and suction tubes. The best I can do is to try to nudge the conversation in a particular direction with occasional interjections while she switches tools. I manage to ask what she’s going to do in San Francisco.
I’m going to visit my uncle and his husband. They’re taking me up to Napa. They’re really into wine, and they're so much fun! Last time I was there, Sex and the City was on, and they had a cocktail party for every episode.
OK, you’re all done with cleaning, but you’re due for an exam today . I’ll go get Dr. K.
He’s going to tell you he’s worried about his kids, but don’t let him fool you, they’re doing great.
Now it’s Dr. K who’s shining a light in my mouth.
Well, I am worried about them. I was born in 1966, when South Korea was still a third-world country, not the modern industrial country it is today. Keep a watch on 22, and put one on 20 as well. The house I grew up in didn’t have running water or electricity. We were poor. Glands feel good. And I worry about my kids taking what they have for granted.
Between teeth, I’m able add that I grew up less than privileged, born with a ration card into post-war England, and that I too worry that there are already a couple of generations out there who don’t remember a time before 9/11 and homeland security, and we're about to graduate another that’s never known a recession.
You can’t tell them. It’s something they have to live through. They have to learn it the hard way. I fear that they're not ready for the experiences they might have.
J, Dr. K, and I, who are from three countries of origin, from three generations, and with our children in turn in three generations, share the same concerns about their ability to navigate the future. We reluctantly concur that we can’t protect our children from all their difficulties.
In the ten years I’ve been visiting this practice, this is the first time the conversation has made it past small talk into personal and societal issues.
We've turned a little to the left.
This was just another visit to the dentist, and I wouldn’t have thought to write about it, but for these three prompts from the Caravan Writers Collective Caravan Campfire I attended that evening.
Write for three minutes about a conversation you had recently, ideally today. Just describe it - it needn’t be important, and in fact the less important it was, the better.
Write a scene between two characters doing something mundane.
Write a piece that contains only one side of a conversation.
I went for all three at once! Why don't you try one, and let us know in the comments how it went?
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Retired dentist here. That conversation was probably less one-sided than you thought, John. Over the years those mumbles, grunts, moans, and gurgles turn into a language all their own. Add in the occasional sentence fragment, and we usually get the gist.
Great writing "exercise" John! You captured that issue of having a chatty sweet person working in your mouth and yet you somehow managed to maintain a conversation. For me, going to the dentist - a lifelong torture event due to complex issues with bone and bite - is one of life's worst tortures. Yet we too have a great practice here in Port Townsend - the father the periodontist/surgeon, the son the dentist/manager, and some amazing staff over the years who make it feel safe and comfortable. See, you brought all that out!