"I'd be Equally as Willing For a Dentist to be Drilling...

...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.

I grew up in East Orange in the days before flouride in drinking water virtually eliminated the common cavity.

When I was a child, dental drills were slow, and the bits--not yet cooled by fine jets of water--generated considerable heat as they ground into your enamel to the malodorous rot beneath.

One day there would be anaesthetic gels to numb your gum before the novocaine needle plunged into what you once thought was inviolable personal space.

Far in the future lay the wonderland of nitrous oxide, which you entered on wings of Walkman and Discman and finally iPod.

Breathing the odd, sweet-smelling gas, I remember once in my 20's staring at the dentist's white shirt inches from my face and seeing the tight weave of the cloth in such detail it looked like chain mail.

Examining the taut layers of thread holding a button in place filled my imagination with the relentless clatter of industrial sewing machines, suddenly cousins to the wing-mounted cannons then firing tree-top volleys into the dense jungles of Vietnam.

The dental drills of my childhood had a saving grace. They were  mechanically fascinating.

The drill was attached to multiple hinged arms, and was driven by cordlike belts attached to grooved wheels at both ends of each arm and finally to the drill itself.  The joints swiveled as well as folded, so  the dentist could position the bit as needed.

The spinning cords generated a unique sound, a worrisome whirring chorus rising and falling as tiny chips of drilled tooth spattered the inside of your mouth.

I used to watch the swivelling arms and vibrating cords closely in an attempt to divert my mind from the drilling and the dentist's big hairy hands.

Doctors and dentists did not wear latex gloves in those days. Although you would no longer have it any other way, for your own protection as well as theirs, back then the bare hand, warm from a thorough washing in the sink, made you feel less the untouchable.

These thoughts came to mind recently as I sat in one of my dentist's treatment rooms early one sunny spring morning.

Behind me was a desktop computer on which digital x-rays could be read instantly, eliminating the dungeonlike closet where my childhood dentist developed x-ray film and hung the dark chips to dry on  rows of clips attached to long metal rods.

How benign a visit to the dentist has become.

As a child, I once stared in the dark at the armchair in my bedroom. In the slotted light angling through  the venetian blinds, I convinced myself I saw Moses in his long tunic and beard sitting in that chair, staring back at me disapprovingly as I slid further under the covers.

Trading childhood fears for grownup cares is one of life's precious mercies. Thus was I pleased to see projected through the dentist's own chair and caged by the slats of the room's vertical blinds this white-eyed, long-jawed, pipe-nosed alien, a worried fellow traveler, wondering whether the spirit world will cover his much-needed orthodonture.

Tags: East Orange | photography | dentists

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