Confessions

I have something to confess to you. I am distinctly unfashionable. Well, for many reasons, but one in particular springs to mind.

It is not fashionable to like your dentist. It is not cool. The most common reaction when you say you have a dentist's appointment is a mixture of sympathy and relief that the person you are talking to does not have such a terrible afternoon in store.

Here I buck the trend somewhat. I like my dentist. I have been visiting the practice since, well, since I grew teeth (strange, that sounds like some kind of monstrous thing that would happen to a particularly malevolant creature in a horror film rather than a natural stage of development that comes to us all).

In that time I have seen two dentists - the lovely Mr E, who used to give me stickers and has since he retired, and the possibly even lovelier Mr A.
-I always want to call them doctors, it's like the whole surgeons being Mr as well, I don't really get it.-
While I was growing up, virtually everyone I knew had tooth 'issues', whether it was numerous fillings, braces or more elaborate grown-up stuff such as the extraction of wisdom teeth or *shudder* root canal work. This includes both my brother and sister, who both had braces and my sister also had to wear some strange tooth mould covered in whitening jelly.

I was no angel either. Back in the day, I liked my fruit salads and marathons as much as the next sweetie hungry nipper. And dentistry is in fact the reason for my only hospital stay - the time I had my two front teeth removed under general anaesthetic. This was due to a , ahem, perhaps misguided solution to keeping me quiet at night by filling my sucky bottle with sickly sweet sugary orange squash. Which turned my (fortunately milk) teeth black. That was a bizarre experience. I can't have been more than about five and they did the whole counting backwards thing as I dissolved into anaesthetic numbness. Then woke up a couple of hours later, disoriented and alone in a completely different room which I hadn't even seen before. How we laughed...not. (I also had about three fillings in my teens).

But instead of giving me a fear of people who do quite frankly weird stuff in your mouth for life (hmm, could have phrased that one better), I actually remember thinking how nice everyone was. And there's something about going to the same practice all my life. I chipped my adult front tooth when someone tripped me up in the netball court and Mr E went for years telling me he would cap it when we were older. He retired and in came efficient, South African Mr A. He had me in the chair in a trice, and while the capping wasn't pleasant by any means, I no longer had this big gap in my teeth - I had a complete smile and you couldn't even see the join.

That was about a decade ago, I would guess. And despite six-monthly check-ups, it's the only work he's done since bar the odd scale and polish. In this time, I've moved from Berkshire to Dorset, back to Berkshire and then up to Suffolk, and the practice has gone private - apart from pre-existing NHS patients like myself (ha, knew there was a reason to keep up the appointments). The receptionist is still the same lady and still remembers me coming in with the rest of my family. And while it's a two and a half hour trip to get there, it's where my family live so I just coincide it with the visits. My work colleagues think I'm mad not to get someone closer, but I LIKE my dentist and I will always have a reason to go home, while I don't suppose I shall have roots in Suffolk forever.

I don't get the sticker any more (more's the pity) but I do get all of two minutes in the chair, minimal and efficient prying and then a cheery "see you in six months!". I do sometimes wonder whether my teeth are secretly rotting and he's not telling me cos it's far more expensive to do work on NHS patients. But I decide they're just all too nice for that. And I come away feeling virtuous, which is more than worth £5.46. I'm just hoping that when my wisdom teeth do eventually make an appearance (I'm not sure they ever will cos I have never had an x-ray), they're where they should be and Mr A can send me on my way with a smile.

Doctors, mind you...that's another story.