If you are not sure what irony is, I will demonstrate and it starts with my teeth. Betcha I got you hooked with that line…or not.
When you see me smile, you’re not going to see one of those gleaming, bright white, Chiclets (the little white chewing gum squares) smiles you see on some of the celebrities. You could best describe my smile looking like a ratty old rope bridge with a few planks missing. Picture the one that Indiana Jones uses to cross a deep canyon in the movie Temple of Doom. Good chance you’ll hit the bottom of the canyon before reaching the other side. You could say I was not very attentive to my dental health. Duh! (My effort to sound hip).
When I was young, I had a very healthy fear of dentists and for good reason. The first time I ever visited a dentist, he decided to drill a hole in one of my teeth without local anesthetic. His reasoning was that young children don’t feel as much pain as adults. I still can’t remember experiencing worse pain and I have mangled myself in several accidents. I’m sure this dentist spends his free time as a brutal dictator of a banana republic. As a result, the next time I visited a dentist was when I was drafted into the Army. I really didn’t visit the dentist, I was forced to.
You would think this would be a bad thing for someone who feared dentists but it actually turned out to be a very positive experience, in spite of the fact I was torn away from my home and forced into the military at the time of a ridiculous war by a completely corrupt President…was I ranting? Sorry.
When you enter the military, voluntarily or not, they love to test you. I took more tests in the first week of my Army stint than I took in the two years I spent at the college I was torn away from. (Am I sounding bitter again?) The results of all these tests helps determine which MOS (job) the new recruit will be assigned. It was determined that I should become a dental assistant. Is that a big scoop of irony or what. This is what saved my pathetic smile.
First thing I had to do was to become a medic. Before becoming a dental assistant, I had to go through medic school and pass, then I moved on to dental assistant school. Why? Because if I was sent into a war zone, I was probably going to be a medic first. Not having a bright white smile in that situation was a good thing. The glint off a perfect set of choppers might have given away my position and I would have become sniper bait.
I did my schooling, passed with flying colors and was sent on my way to multiple duty posts to practice my trade. Unfortunately, everywhere they sent me, they didn’t need a dental assistant. I knew it couldn’t be my breath, I had fixed that. After multiple stops, on both sides of the Atlantic, I finally stuck at a clinic in Bremerhaven, a northern city in Germany. I was the luckiest draftee in the Army. I had a cushy job at a cushy post and no Vietnam.
When I first arrived, I was immediately given a dental exam by the senior dentist in the clinic. The purpose of this was to see what work the new recruits needed and it would be done during dead periods at the clinic to keep the dentists busy. With my dental health, there was going to be no free time at this clinic for any of the dentists. After Captain Woodruff saw my mouth he proclaimed I would lose all my teeth by the time I was forty and own a full set of dentures. I took that as a challenge.
At the beginning of dental assistant school, I had an epiphany, kind of like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, except mine was realizing I might be gumming my food for the rest of my life. I increased my brushing but I also started flossing multiple times everyday. I was one of those annoying guys, proudly walking around with a toothbrush sticking out of my shirt pocket to brush after every meal and always flossing…a dental nerd.
I spent as much time in a dental chair while in the Army as I spent as an assistant next to one. My fear of the dentist disappeared when I found out all this work can be done without pain. Now there’s a novel idea. I received fillings, crowns and had my wisdom teeth removed under local anesthetic (general anesthetic was not easily attainable in the service). I ended up giving classes in dental hygiene and became the poster boy of solid dental health. My smile was still, at best, ugly (hard to fix the years of abuse I put it through) but it was better than looking like Gabby Hays at age 35.
It has been nearly 50 years since I left the service and I am proud to say I still have most of my original teeth. A couple have been replaced with a bridge and prosthetic but most of my choppers are mine and I still enjoy a good steak or corn on the cob without having to watch a Polident commercial to learn how to glue my false teeth into my mouth. Take that Dr. Woordruff.
Fortunately, I never had to serve in Vietnam (I do appreciate all those who did serve in that ugly war. They were true heroes) I was the guy who was not that far from East Germany fighting against Commie dental disease. I am proud to say that I preserved the biting strength! Clever, eh.
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