Thumbsucker

I went to the dentist last week.  I don't mind going to the dentist because I really like my dentist.  His name is Doug.  He doesn't let anyone call him Dr. [such-and-such], just Doug.  Doug has been going through a nasty divorce for years, so every time I see him, he asks me for legal advice -- I'm laying down and he's got his face right up in my face and both of his hands in my mouth and that's the position that I prefer to be in when I'm offering legal assistance.

Doug is pretty chill.  He wears acid-wash jeans and a Hawaiian shirt at the office.  The first time I saw him, I found his attire a little unusual, but now that I am used to it, I think it's completely fine.  His whole job is to get right up top of you and dig around in your piehole which is really pretty gross.  Why shouldn't he be comfortable?

After I get my teeth cleaned by Tammy, who is really good at being a hygienist because she talks a lot but doesn't ask you any questions, Tammy says, "OK, Julie.  Doug isn't here today.  Today it's Dr. Pete."

Today it's Dr. Pete!  That's sounds fun!  I have never met Dr. Pete before, but that's OK.  I wait for him to come in.  I'm running my tongue over my professionally cleaned teeth.  Then I notice that have a wedgie.  And I wonder if my stomach looks flat when I'm lying in this chair.  Do dentists check you out when they come in, or do they just see you for your teeth and gums?  Is it intimate for them, putting their faces right up in your face?  Do they even look at your face?  Are they like gynecologists, except with mouths?  Do I have time to do something about this wedgie?

Dr. Pete appears and he is not anything like Doug.  Dr. Pete is picking up the slack in the dentist wardrobe department.  He is wearing a white coat, which indicates to me at least one failed suicide attempt caused by his dismay at not being a medical doctor.  In addition to, and somewhat overshadowing the white coat, Dr. Pete is sporting a giant reflector/mirror on his forehead.  It is so over-the-top that I laugh out loud.  This will obviously result in Dr. Pete's next suicide attempt.  And, as with all things in his life of not being a medical doctor, he will fail.

OK, so Dr. Pete is a tool, but that's OK, because there's no concern about cavities, and Dr. Pete coming in to visit my mouth is just a formality.

While he's looking around in my mouth, I think about the days when they'd leave you in a room alone with two trays of cleaner in your mouth for like half an hour and it was supposed to taste like bubble gum or blueberries and the whole time you were just dying to spit it out and puke all over the walls.  I did that once.  I gagged and the trays fell into my lap.  I was a little kid.  They just filled the trays back up and jammed them back in my mouth.  It was so primative.

I sucked my thumb till I was five, which is apparently a long time to suck your thumb.  People started to talk.  Then my dentist said to me, "Julie, it's time for you to stop sucking your thumb.  Can you do that?"

No.

Well, I want you to stop sucking your thumb.  I'm going to call you on the phone in three days and see how you're doing with that.

I don't have a phone.

I think you have a phone.

OK.

I really liked sucking my thumb, but Dr. Murphy told me to stop.  I took him very seriously.  I wanted to be a good girl, so I stopped.  Right then and there.

Three days later, I was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the phone rang (I guess we actually did have a phone).  My mother answered it and she handed the phone to me.  It was the first time anyone had ever called for me.  Three days is an eternity to a five-year-old.  I had forgotten all about Dr. Murphy, and my thumb sucking days were already two days behind me.  I was a new woman.  I didn't understand what was happening.  I thought it was Santa Claus.  I was really hoping it was Santa Claus.

Hi Julie.  This is Dr. Murphy.  Have you stopped sucking your thumb?

Yes.

Good.  That's very good.

And that was that.  Except, it was too late.  The damage was already done.  The very next day, I bit into an apple and I lost my first tooth, and then all of my teeth started falling out.  Kids don't usually lose all their baby teeth this early, but I am very advanced.  By the time I was in 3rd grade, all my baby teeth were gone, and the new ones started raging forth from my gums.  We moved from Akron to Iowa City and we went to a new dentist, and the dentist was like, what the fuck is the matter with your kid's teeth?  My mom said she had no idea what he was talking about, so the new dentist reclined the chair back and had me open my mouth, and my mother said my teeth stuck straight up into the air.  The lore is that my front teeth were like, perpendicular to my face.  She gasped and felt like a terrible mother and she said, "Oh my God! What can we do?"

[Try not to get distracted by my little brother's
bow tie and the fact that we look like we are
headed to some sort of ethnic dancing festival.
Just focus on the teeth]

GAAA!

Maybe you're thinking, that's not that bad.  So your teeth were a little weird.  It's your clothes we're concerned about.  Fine.

[Also, I was, not suprisingly if you read this blog, kind of spazzy]

BAM!

Look at those fucking things!  If they let me put my thumb in my mouth one more time, it would have offset my center of gravity and I'd have to start pushing my teeth around in a wheelbarrow.

Let's agree that if my parents hadn't gotten my teeth fixed, it would have been straight-up child abuse.  I mean, I wasn't even allowed to have Wonder Woman Underoos because they were flamable (what clothes, besides fireman suits and wrinkle-resistent button-down shirts from L.L.Bean aren't flamable?) (and if you're dumb enough to set your kid on fire when he's just wearing his underpants, you deserve to shell out the cash to pay for his skin grafts), so if they were so worried about what kind of underpants I had on, why weren't they paying any attention to what was going on in my face?  If that were your kid, would you really need a dentist to tell you that her teeth were jacked up?

Suffice it to say, I was then doomed to a course of aggressive orthodontia for a number of years.  When I was in 3rd grade, I started with a retainer; when I was in 5th grade, I got braces and a head gear to wear at night with hooks and ropes and pulleys and rubber bands; and by the time I was in 6th grade, my braces came off, so I was actually pretty lucky to have the Billy Bob thing over with sooner rather than later.  And let me just say, I know that I was fortunate.  Not everyone who needs braces gets them (like, for example, this snaggle-toothed, but otherwise pretty hot!, 25-year-old I met in Mexico last December, whose parents prefer to vacation in Cancun rather than give their kid a leg up in the dating world).

It was always so embarrassing when people would say, "You have such a pretty smile," and my mom would dryly say, "That's her $5,000 smile." Then I would immediately stop smiling and go straight to feeling bad about all the money they spent on my dumb teeth.  Just think of all the different kinds of flamable underpants that would have bought.