Dental damned

I hate dentists. I know, join the club. But you don't understand: until I was 18, I had only heard about novacaine. My childhood dentist -- let's call him Dr. Jekyll -- wasn't just Old School. He was Old Testament.

They say the Devil's greatest trick was convincing people he didn't exist. I say it was convincing people DDS didn't stand for Doctor of Dental Satanry. Sure, he took on a kindly Mr. Rogers-like form for my parents' sake. But I knew Mr. Hyde was simply waiting for the sound of the drill to cover up his transformation.

It should have been obvious, but by the time you noticed his knuckles -- the hairiest this side of a primate exhibit -- it was too late. They were violating your mouth and flossing your molars.

Then there was that little matter of lack of local anesthetic. The "good" doctor didn't so much drill my teeth as jackhammer them, and the deeper he hammered, the more my nerves became the underlying pipes he took pleasure in rupturing. In a dentist chair, with your mouth wadded in cotton and knuckle deep in hair, no one can hear you scream.

So why do I bring this up today? Well, I just got back from my new dentist's office. I went for a cleaning. I was mentally prepared for a similar experience to my last cleaning, a deep cleaning, at a previous dentist -- a three-day ordeal that, despite many novacaine injections, left me traumatized, in pain, and wondering if a hit man would charge less for a dental hygienist.

Imagine my surprise when my dental assistant du jour first asked me what kind of music I'd like on their iPod (I went with soothing Hawaiian), dabbed my temples with some lilac-scented oil (so that's what aromatherapy is), and proceeded to cleanse my pearly yellows with some new-fangled water jet tool. No pain, no whimpering, and no hit men.

Seems the Devil is learning to hide his tracks better.