I arrived at the endodontist’s office at 8:20 for my 8:30 appointment. Sherry, the receptionist, slid back the glass window in front of her desk and waved at me, and I found a seat. I looked back toward her as the glass closed. Too early for small talk, I guessed. No problem there.
I was the only patient in the room, and had my pick of magazines. There was a People on top of the stack. On its cover was that “American Idol” guy runner-up holding a baby. I knew his name but couldn’t recall it. The magazine cover headline read, “Yes, I’m Gay.”
I chose to go with a safer Southern Living instead. (Not that there’s anything wrong with it.) It just seemed a little early in the day for testimonies of such a personal nature, and my last thought about it was to wonder if that cover would be saved in the baby’s scrapbook for future memories.
I had barely started reading about a restaurant in Savannah when a door opened and a nurse called my name.
I followed her down the hall and she pointed inside one of the rooms. I tried to get comfortable in the chair they had for me as the nurse, a serious young lady, I was discovering, asked me if I preferred the gas.
I told her, “Shaken, not stirred,” which didn’t crack her icy front, and she lowered a rubber tube-like device onto my nose.
Soon, as they say, all was right with the world.
The doctor came in and asked if I had any questions before we began. I really wanted to know if he knew the name of the gay “American Idol” guy, but instead I asked him if I could get some of the gas to go. He laughed. I still hadn’t gotten through to his nurse though.
It was time for the first shot of novacaine. “A little stick,” the doc said to me as the needle went somewhere into my mouth. But the gas was winning and I felt nothing. I began to wonder if there was a portable tank I could strap to my back when I left.
“Well, let's give you a few minutes to get good and numb,” said the doc. He was walking out the door as I tried to get one of the many hilarious responses I had come up with out of my mouth. Finally I did, which I think sounded something like “Oblatocod.” But he was already gone. However, Nurse Smiley heard it and grinned down at me. I had apparently discovered her language.
She left me alone to the view of blue skies and the sound of the sweetest rhythms I had ever heard in my lifetime, coming from a speaker in the wall. I let the laughing gas carry me away to the place where brilliant thoughts and epiphanies were suddenly opening my eyes to ancient truths and wisdom, pondered by man since the beginning of time. All the mysteries of life became clear. Like when Jack Nicholson asked Tom Cruise, “Are we clear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
It was suddenly just me, and a few good men, riding the nitrous powered dentist’s chair into a new millennium of conscious thought.
Close to an hour later the procedure came to its end. The smell of drilled ivory filled my nostrils and I was ready to get out of the chair and into some fresh air.
The nurse slipped the rubber hose away from my nose and handed me some paperwork and a couple of prescriptions, neither of which were for nitrous oxide. It was probably just as well, I thought to myself as I wobbled down the hallway toward Sherry, who was waiting for my credit card.
Out in my car, I tried to remember the experience, to get back any of the glorious revelations that had been so evident to me just a short time ago.
But there was nothing there of any consequence, only some celebrity declaring his sexuality and an unsmiling nurse who finally smiled.
Oh well, at least my tooth didn’t hurt anymore.