Just Like Suicide pt.15

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Thirty
Odessa hated going to the dentist. This place was modernist and squeaky clean; the staff was invariably pleasant and organized; the jazz they played was far better than the usual elevator music. Even the magazines were a decent mix of fluff and information. Most importantly, the air did not smell the slightest bit of ground tooth. But she still hated going to the dentist.
After checking in with the smiling young woman behind the partition, she crossed the room to sit and wait for her turn. It was just her scheduled semi-annual cleaning. Unfortunately, she had reached that age where all of her warranties had expired. Fillings had life spans and her teeth were loaded with old fillings. Whenever she thought about the amount of metal in her mouth, she credited the John Birch Society’s campaign to block the fluoridation of water supplies. Fluoridation according to them was a tool in the Communist conspiracy for mind control. When she had asked her grandfather to explain how that worked, the only answer she got was, “It’s a poison.” Fluoride in large enough amounts is a poison. So is chlorine. Her grandfather never worried about chlorination, though. Her home town’s city council had swallowed the conspiracy theory hook line and sinker: fluoride hadn’t been added to the water system until she was in college. All the kids she grew up with had a mouth full of fillings and crowns. A good number even had dentures now.
Truth be told, it was the combination of no fluoride and the onslaught of cheap sugary products which produced that bumper crop of cavities. Teeth all by themselves are no match for nearly limitless soda pop and candy. And, lord, she had a sweet tooth as a child.
She sat on the comfortable couch flipping through a magazine with her stomach in knots. Her stomach apparently never quite outgrew the trepidation engrained in her during all those many many trips to the dentist as a child. Besides, holding onto fear was a something of a family tradition. With her grandparents, Odessa had sympathized: she grew up hearing their stories of pneumonia, pleurisy, and the Spanish flu which had killed so many of their cousins and neighbors. Life was far more vulnerable before antibiotics were developed. The slightest cut or a chest cold could easily be lethal. That’s why they were so terrified when she and her older sister climbed around in the old barn with its rusty nails or chased each other through the peanut fields in the rain. Even mildly risky behavior could exact a high price.
Mind you, caution isn’t a bad thing at all. It’s a very valuable survival tool, a good braking mechanism to prevent sheer recklessness. Unfortunately, it so easily creeps over into the paralysis of fear, shackling everyone it touches. It truly sucks as a way of life. Change is not the enemy. Her attitude, according to Maggie, was classic contemporary thinking. Change, while seeming inevitable now, was seen historically as dangerous. The status quo was a safety net. Because everyone knew exactly what the rules were and what the penalties would be for violating them, it was an effective way of balancing the uncertainty of daily survival. It reduced some of the stress. Think of the hundreds of years in Egypt with almost no change and the stability that gave its people. Any regime change, any shift in the population were dangerous. When survival became more assured, the rules became less critical for society’s well-being, even detrimental to it. With all the advances made in science and technology, change was now the only constant. Those who didn’t change were left behind. As someone raised with manual typewriters and carbon paper and telephones tethered to the wall, Odessa was very aware that this life of constant change was definitely more challenging. She hated the time it took to learn how to use every new phone, new computer, new entertainment system. And not everyone in her family was even up to that simple challenge. Fear for them provided a good rationale for resisting change. In their minds, the past was a far better time. She couldn’t disagree more. The past they treasured so much was cherry picked. No one in their right mind misses carbon paper.
The waiting room had diffused light. The walls were lightly frosted floor to ceiling windows so no one could see out or in but the few people walking down the sunlit sidewalk were transformed into fractured shadows, legs and arms dislocated into a pulsing pattern of light and dark showing more movement than mass as they passed the windows.
When the dental hygienist called her name, she picked up her purse and entered the work area. She sat in the padded chair and looked out at the distorted shadows the plants outside cast on those frosted glass walls. The breeze created by the traffic made the plants dance, leaves darting around, branches swaying in and out of sight. Oddly hypnotic, better than watching fish, she thought.
She sat in the padded chair with her mouth wide open as the hygienist stuck tools inside, shooting a stream of water at her gum line, picking at recalcitrant bits of plaque, buffing the teeth with the essence of peppermint. Odessa always drooled and managed to spit most of the paste onto her bib as she had as a child. She always felt like her jaw dislocated being held open that way for so long, losing any control over her mouth. It was kind of embarrassing.

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