It's not as strange as it sounds. My friend is a dentist, and I suspected that she wanted to show me her new clinic. Maybe I was mesmerized by the pinks and purples, by the freshness, by the fact that my friend looks 21 but has been in college for five years and apprenticeship for one year, by the fact that a "heavy" cleaning costs under $20.
"What's wrong?" she asked me solemnly when I'd settled into her Pepto-Bismol pink chair. "Uh, nothing's wrong. My teeth are dirty."
First she looked. Then she attacked them with a vicious mechanical pick, after fishing around the equipment to figure out why it wouldn't start. The mechanical pick was worse than the traditional manual one, and I winced in a sensitive moment. "It hurts?" she asked, then had her gloved finger in my mouth with local anesthetic almost before I knew what was happening. I let her numb me, having heard that local dentists are none too gentle.
She worked about five more minutes. When she wanted me to spit, she commanded, "Throw." Then she announced. "Your teeth are fine. They are not dirty." I knew that my current dental hygiene would have earned a lecture on flossing at Dr. Griesbach's, so I just smiled.
I got a sort-of cleaning and got to admire my friend in action, and she wouldn't even let me pay her for the privilege.
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