Surgery

Blogging from the Dentist's chair because I can.

While I appreciate the care and skill of my dentist, and admire the business acumen that has build his practice, I cannot sit in the chair for him to work on my teeth without thinking of the scene from the Neil Simon play The Good Doctor (adapted from a Chekhov short story entitled "Surgery" I believe). In the play an apprentice dentist does every painful maladroit thing imaginable--a nightmare dental session, but the effect of the scene is comic. I mentioned it to my dentist once and, as personable and charming as he is, he couldn't quite cover the distress he felt at what to him must have been yet another stereotyped dental nightmare. When we produced Little Shop of Horrors, I didn't even mention the dentist character. My dentist doesn't deserve the discomfort.

Actually, my dental sessions have always been so painless and uneventful that a different kind of comedy comes to the fore. More than once as I'm sitting in that chair, mouth stuffed with cotton and tools with both the dentist and his assistant staring intently at me from their little rolling stools, I begin to laugh. It seems so ridiculous for two grown people to be so intent on my teeth. It seems even more ridiculous for me to submit my teeth to such scrutiny.