‘Please, could you just clean my teeth?’ I want to say, only I don’t. I go along with it, praying it will be over quicker if I cooperate.
‘And how are you today?’ she says in a frighteningly polite voice, a flash of steel glinting in her eyes as she looks down on me in her impossibly white outfit.
‘Well, I’m at the dentist so…’ I give a little nervous laugh, inviting her to show me she is human. She refuses. Her expression flickers for a second, then she hardens the courtesy in her tone.
The angel of hygiene is now being ultra-polite, a tone that meets menace coming round the other way: ‘Is there something wrong? Is there anything I can do?’
I can see that we are into ‘Do you need to take a moment?’ territory. This can only draw out the misery.
‘I’m fine. I just need to…’ Get it over with! Get your screaming electric scraper going and discover how bad my gums are and then give me the goddam lecture about flossing!
I know this lecture is coming, as surely as I know anything. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘I’m just stressed.’ With soul-crushing correctness, she says: ‘I’m sorry you feel this way. Have you had a bad experience in the past?’
Fine, I think, I’ll let you have it. ‘The thing is, the hygienist I was seeing before, at the other practice, she used to lecture me about flossing every time I went and I came to dread it. I know I should floss. But I have this thing. It gives me the heebie-jeebies…like a phobia…’
That’s it — phobia. Why didn’t I think of that before? They’ll have to back off if I say phobia.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in