When you are directed to rinse, you reach for the pink cup. The dentist also has a pink cup on her instrument tray...

Maybe someday nuclear fusion will take place in devices no bigger than this...

The cyclops of the dentist's office shows its true colors...

At the dentist's office...

At the dentist's office...

At the dentist's office...

A day at the dentist. Sip, swirl, spit. Ptooey in pink...

Excessive cuteness makes my teeth hurt, but in this case my tooth already hurt for another reason, and I found the tableau in the dentist's examining room amusing.

It served me well for half a century, but when it comes to sore molars, the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease, it gets the hook...

I got into the chair and...what is that woman doing there?

Once the hygienist lowers you to the horizontal, there is not much to look at other than the dental hygienist herself (very rude) or the dental light shining above your head....

When I say I take my camera everywhere, I mean everywhere, even to the dentist's office.

You have a lot of time of your hands when the hygienist goes to process the digital x-rays. But if those hands are holding a camera...

...than to ever let a woman in my life!" I first heard that hilariously mysogynistic song from My Fair Lady when I was about eight and my parents brought home the soundtrack recording from the Broadway theater.

That minds could joke about going to the dentist only confirmed my sense that life was full of temptations and pitfalls I could barely imagine. Back then, shadows on my bedroom wall--let alone knowing I had a dentist's appointment the next day--could keep me awake for hours.