Dealing with Dentistry

Oh man. Since when has the dentist become such a traumatic experience? It's not like I enjoyed it as a kid (I remember gagging when they tried to make me sit with my teeth in those fluoride foam trays and spitting pink stuff all over the place) but it wasn't a place that I dreaded beyond comprehension. My lukewarm feelings are no more. The dread is real.

Exhibit A: Gentle Dental.

A hellish, cream-walled prison of confusion, pop-up fees, receding gum lines, and Novocaine.  The first visit almost exactly one year ago should have been enough. I was sideswiped with a need for different x-rays even though I had recently had x-rays and would have to pay for these out of pocket. Already smarting with this indignity, I was forced to bite down on unpadded bite wings (they were out of the pads) which cut into my gums quite painfully, while staring at a ridiculous mural of a tropical white sand beach dotted with palm trees. This kind of crap (the mural, the missing pads) does not inspire confidence. The resulting struggle was epic and in an embarrassing turn of events I found myself glaring at this woman in her baggy scrubs and telling her she was hurting me. With exclamation points. Because she was. I realize this is somehow against the rules of modern dentistry. Going to the dentist sucks but you deal with it. You need take it like an adult, even if it feels like an advanced and creative form of torture. If you don't follow the rules you are treated like you're five and told what a great job you're doing as you sit there suffering. The whole thing is a complete humiliation.

So it was that I found myself too cheap to deal with the necessity of paying for new x-rays yet again and returning to same dentist office for my cleaning a year later. It was a mistake. An adult would perhaps acknowledge that this place was not the right place for me, learned from last year's mistake, and found a new place to go, x-ray cost be damned. But apparently the challenge of find a new dentist was too much for me. I just wanted to get it over with. So there was this: my dental hygienist with remnants of a heavy french accent who insisted on asking me questions about my life throughout the cleaning (why do they do this when their hands are in your mouth?), the exam which revealed two cavities (allegedly) and was conducted by a dentist not much older than me who called me sweetheart repeatedly and appeared to imagine himself a possible shoe-in for Vince Vaughn in Swingers. Desperate to avoid making another appointment, I signed on to get them taken care of then and there. The whole thing took on the air of a bad dream as I was shuffled from the cleaning room to the lobby and back again, was informed of the cost of the fillings after they deduced coverage of my weak dental insurance, and then the found myself in the midst of sudden dental chair and Novocaine-needle freakout which resulted in tears streaming silently from under the Ray Charles glasses they gave me, and the eventual administration of nitrous oxide. This made the dentist's schtick almost bearable (at one point he told the hygienist that he needed the area to be dry, desert dry, Gobi dry, Sahara dry, but thankfully I was able to ignore this as an indictment against against his dental qualifications, and remain sitting still and breathing through my nose.

I left with my Quasismodo face (you know how it feels) and vowed never to go back. For real. I'd like to think that I could hold it together in a different dental office, one that doesn't constantly inspire words like "chartalan", "highway robbery", and "malpractice" but we'll see. I'm not convinced that dentists aren't secret sadists, every one, but I am looking for recommendations. I need a new dentist.

Happy Halloween

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine was definitely action-packed. I was a dead bride, complete with scary makeup, a handmaid black veil (thanks Caitlin), and bouquet of weeds. Sam was Driver, and yes, he sewed that scorpion on the back of his jacket all by himself. I would like to remind you all to vote on your two favorite stories/photos. Links to all of the stories are in the post below. At the moment we have a three-way tie, which simply will not do.

More Inspiration

Don't forget, the deadline for This Contest is Haunted is coming up soon. Send your entries to rachel.wri@gmail.com. At this point, I only have a couple entries which means automatic prizes for you creative and daring souls. If you need extra inspiration I highly recommend the Milburn's Haunted Manor. Featuring a haunted house, haunted forest, and a haunted pitch-black maze, a completely horrific evening is guaranteed. You will cling to your friends, you will shriek, and you will spend your downtime doing that high-pitched, awkward giggling that happens when you've just had the shit scared out of you. Good times.

Fear

I remember the first time I was ever really truly terrified by a movie. It began with Indiana Jones and continued on throughout each awkward phase of my life.  This is the loose timeline:

5 years old: Watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Terrified when the bleeding heart was ripped out of that man's body.

6 years old: Watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Terrified by the man's head rolling out of the mist. Had a nightmare.

Grade School: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Goosebumps, Lois Duncan

Middle School: Dean Koontz, Stephen King, my dad hiding in the orchard at night when I had to go out to the barn and then jumping out and scaring the living shit out of me.

13 years old: Scream came out, followed by gems like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination. Often filled with an irrational fear of something coming to get me when washing my hair in the shower with my eyes closed.

14th Birthday Party: Watched the Exorcist for the first time. Actually, didn't watch it because I was covering my face with a pillow.

15 years old: Tried watching the Exorcist again with Charissa. She made me turn it off. We watched it again the next morning all the way through, it was almost worse in the light of day.

16-18 years old: Caught up on classics such as Halloween, Psycho, etc.

21 years old: Watched the Grudge in a movie theater in Auckland. Reverted to pre-teen levels of fear of the dark.

28 years old: Remembered how great scary stories are when Caroline told us stories about the haunted house she grew up in. Further inspired by her gift of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Vol. 1.

also

  **Decided to have a scary story and photo contest complete with real prizes (no Big Billy Bass for you)**

Details coming soon.