Being a pediatric dentist must be a little freaky, like being an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in legs that sometimes fall off. They’re really more of a ferryman, making a buck escorting those hollow incisors over the rainbow bridge.
The first time I took the kids to a pediatric dentist, I was told they had to have cleanings every six months; a $100 racket per child and one that also seemed pretend, let's be honest! They went in with the bent mirror, counted/tapped on a few teeth, and they were done. Japhy got to pick out a free toy on the way out, and chose a pair of cheetah print sunglasses that I later realized were nearly impossible to see through, explaining why he constantly had on a confused smile and walked around with his arms out wide while wearing them.
The only time I ever saw a hygienist break out a proper tartar scraper with the kids was the time I took them to my very non-pediatric Brooklyn dentist. This was a guy who had a wall of framed photos of himself posing with celebrities on the wall, like a pizza parlor. If you see Joan Rivers and Sylvester Stallone on a dentist’s wall, you know you’re getting jabbed in the gums with something sharp.
A few months ago, I booked the kids in for their semi/annual cleaning at a kids’ place nearby with one of those tooth shingles hanging out front, the international sign of a dentist’s office. On the phone, the receptionist said they were only open on Saturdays, which seemed strange, but whatever.
The office had hardwood floors and an animal mural on the wall (which, as we know, is no real proof of care). Scout and Japhy both had their "cleanings" at the same time in a Dry Bar setup of side-by-side dentist chairs. The visit consisted of the hygienists showing them Mr. Squirty and Mr. Sucky, and using one of those rubber polishing brushes with a face on it to briefly tickle their finger. I am not convinced any tartar was removed, the magicians in dentist coats just splooged some water into the air and let the kids hold the toothbrush.
For a bonus $50, the dentist also insisted on x-raying Scout's mouth. After the electromagnetic pulses had bored through her skull, we got a film that looked like the radar from Crimson Tide, adult teeth stealthily piloting their way through the dark toward baby teeth. We all stood together looking at 38 teeth moving toward nuclear escalation and went, "wow, that is pretty horrifying to see."* The dentist had no other professional opinions to offer, just a kind of knowing grimace, like “yep.”
*See also: shark teeth.
Many little things made me feel that this was a front for a fake pediatric dentist operated covertly out of a legitimate dentist office on the weekend when no one was around, or one that had been abandoned and the chairs left behind. For one, the receptionist wouldn't take a credit card or Venmo or Zelle or a cheque, only cash. I never have cash, so I had to stand around with the kids by the hairless giraffes for half an hour while Noodles ran off to get money. He couldn't find a bank card so we ended up paying by cheque anyway, but the receptionist said we couldn't get a receipt until two Saturdays later, once the cheque had cleared. The hygienist couldn't get paid until the office did, she said. Why couldn't the office pay the hygienist? This wasn’t IHOP.
Possibly pantomimed dental cleaning aside, I felt like I could remove "book kids' dentist checkup" from my to-do list for another six-12 months. A valid effort had been made, whether or not these were con artists with hygiene kits and lab coats they bought off Amazon. Won’t you let me rest.
Fast forward to the arrival of our new climbing dome for the backyard, and then to Scout falling like Alice down the rabbit hole through the dome, knocking her mouth on the bars on the way. She stumbled screaming from the structure, her mouth a liquid swirl, a Freudian nightmare in action. “They’re wobbly,” she wailed. Two of her teeth were at bent angles, and Noodles was calling the pediatrician and the dentist to see what we should do while she sat on my lap spitting blood onto the pavers, then a tooth into her lap. I picked it up, wrapped it in a tissue, and put it in my pocket. The other wobbly one was a front tooth, and we couldn’t remember if it was adult or not.
Dental emergencies for kids fall into a bit of a grey area. The pediatrician advised us to call the dentist. The dentist… ’s phone had been disconnected. Poof!
I took her to the E.R., where we were scooted to the front of the line around the people seemingly just living in the corridors on guerneys and in wheelchairs. The attending told us they were “just” baby teeth, and that “it takes a lot of trauma” to knock out adult teeth. I listened sensibly with the tooth in my pocket. The other tooth would fall out, and disappear into the ether with all the teeth that came before (into the bin, or, if you’re a freak, into something custom off Etsy).
I drove by the dentist’s office a couple of days ago and the tooth shingle was still hanging outside, yellowing in the spring air.
The tooth fairy came late at night. Scout got $20.
How it happened
Looking for other backyard play stuff on Facebook Marketplace:
Goodies
Loved Wintering by Katherine May, and seeing time as cyclical rather than as a gloomy march forward and away from everything you ever knew hahaaaagh.
Loved The Year of The Horses by Courtney Maum, which is something of a motherhood coming-of-age story.
Good: these ratings of babies in classical art by an art historian.
I spoke to the American owner of a shop called Ski Haus and also some von Trapps (the von Trapp family singers!) in a look at mimicry/identity/migration in ski culture for Catapult.
The dream interpretation newsletter I didn’t know I needed, from autumn fourkiller.
Samantha Hunt! Samantha Hunt!:
My grandma Norma Stallings Nolan Santangelo had an accreted name that marks waves of twentieth-century immigration in New York. She lived to be 101. She loved Jesus. Her condo was filled with sexy pictures of him: damp eyes, bare chest, cuts in his body like small vulvas. His flesh broken and open to the world. My grandmother loved people.
Rachel Cusk on Taryn Simons:
A baby is already an independent being: despite its many needs, it doesn’t exist solely as a condition of the mother. The baby is already important, but not necessarily in a way that the mother can see or find acceptable. It is important in spite of its mother, not because of her. The mother uses the baby’s image as a way of changing the basis of this importance, and of proving that she created—and is still in the act of creating—the baby.
Another goodie from Oldster:
I think about those tearful farewells more and more. I appreciated them at the time, but honestly, the younger I was, the more they were like water off a duck's back. —Robert Burke Warren
tiny humiliations from maryoliversdrunkcousin:
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<3
Great article ! 🎉