Thursday, January 5, 2012

Tudo o que voce sempre quis saber

Too many aspects of our lives are universal. Today I went to the dentist, and left with my thirst sated, what with all that blood. Even with impeccable dental hygiene, those charlatans with pointy sticks will draw. If any dentist reads this, please take this bit of advice to heart: just... stop it with that.

So here we are: I didn't like going to the dentist. Does anyone? How unique! I want to meet this person with a bizarre probing fetish. Actually, no.

I wonder why I share these things. The history of written thought is filled with lamentations about dental visits. To free our newborn country from the shackles of tyrannical oral surgeons was the reason we fought a war. Wooden teeth are the closest real analogue to freedom we may ever see. But if I hate the dentist, and you hate the dentist, and the dentist drives home to her house but can't bring herself to turn off the engine because that means she needs to go into the house and face the things she earned from her horrible profession including her husband-with-a-chip-on-his-shoulder and their nascent dentist brood absorbing dark dental secrets through social osmosis, why talk about it?

The dentist makes me feel small. As a medical profession, it's pretty selfless when viewed detachedly--dentists, much like I imagine podiatrists, receive very little attention and respect for the positive outputs of their vocations. If I had a bunion and a podiatrist "cured" me, I'd be pretty jazzed. But the simple fact that life involves, you know, maybe getting a bunion or a cavity or whatever every now and then which requires me to see some specialist to inflict pain on my person in a therapeutic manner is science goddamn fiction.

You can't compare it to open-heart surgery or tumor cleansing or kidney modification or liver enlargement or body-part medical-jargon. If my heart doesn't come out of my chest today and the hole filled with a potato battery, I am going to die. But if I have a cavity? I'm uncomfortable. I may even get sick. But I can take care of it.

Perspective ends up concealing and congealing things. The reason I share these things is because my world view is mine. It is all I know and therefore supersedes all others. Right by default.

All you ever wanted to know is inside. Miner dig deep.

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