Today I needed to have a tooth removed. Through the mixing up of phone numbers and miscommunication with his receptionist, I ended up making an appointment with my childhood dentist, Dr. Vezina, or, as he would have us call him when we were kids, Dr. Funteeth. I wedge myself into one of the waiting room chairs and look at the wallpaper, the patterns of cute bears holding balloons and cute bears in uniforms and cute bears sadistically crushing smaller bears?— no, and cute bears holding smaller, slightly cuter bears. I wonder, what is the kind of person who’s job is to develop cute new ideas for kid friendly wall paper, and what might he or she be doing, wherever they are, at this very moment. I imagine he or she must be doing or watching other things do really cute stuff to give them new cute ideas. Perhaps somewhere an overweight woman has dressed her dog as peter pan and is repeatedly giving him the “roll over” command while eating adorable looking gingerbread cookies. Perhaps somewhere else an effeminate man who is losing his hair stands in his kitchen, looking at himself in a mirror while painting unicorns on his body with glitter paint. Perhaps somewhere else, even further away, a man looks up into the sun, directly into it, seriously damaging his retinas while imagining how cute it might look with a smiley face. A kid starts to scratch the nose off one of the bears on the wall who is tickling another bear who is wearing a tutu. “Hey don’t scratch him away, someone suffered to think up that bear,” I say to him, kind of as a joke to myself. His mom definitely catches the word “suffer” and swings her head in my direction and then back to her son, and asks Jacob to get down and go play with the trucks that just happen to be on the other side of the room. I try to adjust myself in my seat and realize I’m actually pretty stuck in it. I glance over at the coffee table next to may chair and peruse the stacks for some reading material. I’m finishing up snow white’s forearm in my Disney princesses edition connect the dots activity book when the receptionist slides open her plastic slidey window and calls my name. I feel the combination of slight nervousness mixed with a hint of excitement and the overwhelming presence of let’s get this the fuck done. I pass Jacob who is down on all fours slamming plastic trucks into one another and making overly enthusiastic demolition noises while his mother gives him a “shush” finger. I smile at her like, “that’s cute what your kid is doing that you have to shush him for,” but she quickly identifies me as the “way-too-old-to-be-here-without-a-problem” person and she pretends to ignore me. The receptionist tells me to follow her please, and soon we are in the heart of the beast. I pass several rooms full of dentistry equipment and cute but uncomfortable pictures of kittens in jars or puppies in bottles with cute sayings like, “three’s a crowd,” and “man’s best friend just got a little better.” In one room a kid is screaming his head off while his mother attempts to calm him. “Honey, the dental paste really isn’t all that bad. Just think about how shiny your teeth are going be when it’s done working!” “I don’t want thiny teeth that stuff tastes like thit!” “Language, sweety pie.” “Thit, thit, thit.” In the next room a little girl is staring into the eyes of a nurse trying to figure out what in the hell she is talking about. Finally the nurse butts in and decided pink is a fitting color for her new toothbrush. I breathe in a large sniff of what I recognize as bubblegum flavored fluoride and get a little light headed before making it to my chair where the stout red haired woman I had talked to on the phone a few days earlier tells me the doctor will be right with me. I put my head in the plastic head crater and start to try to fall asleep because wouldn’t that be awkward for Dr. Funteeth. I’m fiddling with some of the teeth scrapers when Funteeth comes in and I put them back quick and he asks me “how are you today!” with a big smile really close to my face. I wince and say, “I’m good.” “Ultraspectacular,” says Dr. Funteeth, and he proceeds to ask me some basic dental health questions, most of them resulting in a “no” or “never” response. I never really noticed it as a kid, but the man is never not smiling. He finishes the question ere and shuffles out of the room with the smile tucked up under his mustache. A nurse will be in soon to apply the local anesthetic. I lay back and glance up at the sparkly butterfly stickers and think about who might have put them there. Perhaps some kid thought he would stick it to the man by sticking them to the ceiling where they’d be hard to peel off. Perhaps a largerish nurse had reached up and stuck them there with the hopes that they would help calm patients. I inhale another big waft of fluoride that smells like blueberries if blueberries grew in medical supply cabinets and get a little light headed. Perhaps I’m imagining them. The nurse comes into the room and asks me who I am and I tell her. “Alright,” she says, and tells me all about the procedure. “You’ll be knocked out for the operation which is a simple extraction so there’s nothing to worry about. I just had an extraction last week and I felt fine the next day. Doctor Vezina does good work, and I’ll be here all along helping him out.” She seems young and has pretty eyes. She asks me if I’m ready I say “yeah,” and on goes the mask over my face. I’m told to count backwards from 100, and at 98 the sparkly butterflies get blurry and start flying in and out of one another. At 96 I’m out cold. continue story in