BITE ME!

So I just got home from my bi-annual dental cleaning, and feeling kind of giddy.  No, I didn't receive any gas or vicodin or drink heavily before I went there.  Paula, my hygienist, is just the BEST.   She told me today something that no dental professional has ever said to me in my entire life, and this is really saying something, she said 'you are my poster child for cleanings.'  In other words, I'm the patient who is so good and uncomplaining and compliant in the chair, she actually enjoys her work.  Stunning comment for me, a patient who breaks out in a cold sweat just entering the building, and who famously bit Dr. Snow the last time he worked on me, hard, even though I was unaware I even did it, it was just an involuntary instinct.  The sound of that drill transforms me into the 8 year old child I once was, when an evil dentist insisted on drilling my huge cavity-pocked molar without anesthesia, and my mom helped them hold me down.  With Paula's flawless technique and calming demeanor, I really don't mind the cleanings at all anymore, in fact one time she did a deep cleaning where she scraped way down under the gums, and I didn't flinch.  So I think sometimes ordinary people "just doing their jobs" can make a big difference in someone's life.  I appreciate you, Paula, but to Dr. Snow I can only say - barbiturates, bite block, headphones blaring Radiohead, let's just do whatever it takes, because 50 years is apparently not long enough to outgrow certain horrors.  I don't wanna leave a trail of blood from Emerald Hills.