Cell Phones and the Dentist

Do not you just hate people who talk on their mobile phones while they drive? Blindly babbling away, not paying attention to the street, endangering everyone near so inconsiderate.

Anyway, now while I was talking on the telephone and driving to the dentist, then I got a small bit distracted and turned onto the incorrect road twice. However, I figured out a shortcut right back to where I belonged and pulled into the parking lot right on time. Regrettably, it was the parking lot in my physician’s office, not even my dentist.

Now, I’ve always been somewhat reluctant to visit the dentist. When I was young, they used to lie to me to catch me . Of course after I understood what was happening I’d throw a crying fit in the car on the road to the dentist, in the elevator on the way up to the office, in the waiting area, in the dentist’s chair throughout the whole visit, at work while my mom paid, from the elevator on the way down, from the car on the road home, and once more when my father came home the night just to be sure everybody understood just how I felt about it.

My mom was afraid of the dentist. And she shared the anxiety and its effects with her children. She chose our dentist based only on the fact he would offer her plenty of Novocain. Plenty of Novocain. Far Novocain. Beyond that, she never actually bothered about the skills-as-a-dentist thing.

My theory is that dentistry has been devised by Beelzebub, predicated chiefly on the fact that our dentist seemed exactly how I imagined that a Devil’s minion would seem. And, oh, by the way, once we were finally completed and desired nothing more than to operate as quickly and as much as possible, he would smile at us kids, together with his coke-bottle-thick eyeglasses which makes him seem popeyed, and hand us each a lollipop. Maybe not the best dentist, but surely a clever businessman lining up return customers.

Now, even after better dentists have shown that there may potentially be some redeeming value in dental care, I still get a bit unsettled prior to a scheduled appointment. Hence, I have two things to say about the Mobile Phone thing:

1) It could have become the fact of going to the dentist who distracted me and not the mobile phone. I believe, possibly my subconscious mind was trying to get me to visit the wrong place and also miss my appointment entirely. Self-protection is a very powerful instinct in times of peril. That could explain it.

2) If it was the mobile phone use, I believe I deserve an exemption from condemnation since, after all, I was on my way to the dentist. Perhaps I would not have been able to speak again once I came out. 1 small slip of the drill and, oops. Or I might have choked on a few of those forty appliances they had crammed into my mouth only before asking me how I was doing.

Either way, I feel completely justified in continuing to gauge others if they use a mobile phone while driving. Unless, obviously, I learn they were on their way to the dentist.