In Continuum.

Masked Villains

I had a series of joke books when I was younger, and my sister and I were fascinated by the questions inside. That was probably the origins of cold and lame jokes, and I remember being humored by the stuff they wrote in there quite a bit. One of the joke was this: "Why do doctors and dentists wear masks when operating on their patients?" Of course, the sensible answer would be for hygiene purposes. But the answer to that question actually was: "So that when anything bad happens, they won't be recognized". Which sort of makes some really senseless...sense. But speaking of dentists, I went for one of my long-overdue appointment, and as usual I had a middle finger stuck way up, stuffed into my pants' pocket as she drilled into my teeth and gum, threatening to disfigure the lower half of my face.

Now, I have no complaints when it comes to dental hygiene. I mean, I do recognize the importance of having a nice set of teeth, healthy and tar-free. I'm not exactly afraid of the hooks and the drills that the dentists stick into your mouth, or the gobs of blood that you spit out every time he or she instructs you to rinse in the basin. What I am more afraid of, or rather irritated of, is that mouth of theirs. As they operate, they will go on and on about how poor your gum health is, how you should brush your teeth this way instead of that, and if your dentist is anywhere above the age of 35, you are in for a good lecture afterwards involving a tooth brush and a fake set of human teeth. Basically, back to the basics for you on how to brush you teeth and floss it afterwards. She might have re-educated me on the ABCs and I might have found that a little more useful.

Dentists and I seem to have a bond of some kind, a bond I'd rather not have. My braces-wearing career started in Secondary Three, after much persuasion and convincing from my parents. As usual, money never was the problem, and they wanted their son to have a good set of teeth. You can call it a sort of investment perhaps, so that when he grows a little older, he might attract a girl or two and hopefully, get married and have a bunch of grandchildren. That might be true, but right then being in a all-boys school it didn't exactly matter if you were good looking or hideous. Nobody cared anyway, save for the Gay Club from A class.

The dentist of the school was Shaun Liu's - my classmate - mother. And every time somebody comes knocking at the classroom door for you to go downstairs for a checkup, people would glare at Shaun and blame his mother for all the troubles. Most of the time, a bunch of boys would go together, because a group is always better than a single person when taking the road down to the dentist, with the thoughts of deadly drills and hooks drifting around in your head, you want as much bullshit-talks as possible before meeting your eventual fate.

So, that happens about one every three months I think, and I remember instead of hating the dentist, we usually end up talking with the dentist and then waiting for our friends to finish before actually heading back to class. Well, doing anything other than having a class was better, even dental appointments. Besides, if your gum health is good she might even award you with a candy or two, and that was definitely a plus factor for going there once in a while.

But of course, I had my braces and done and that was probably the worst years of my life, in terms of my self-esteem of course. With braces, one would naturally cultivate the habit of smiling with your mouth shut. I remember the first days of my braces when I actually had to put 'rubber bands' in my mouth, I took a full hour to do so. And sometimes if you are not weary, it will snap halfway through class for example, and you will scream for somebody next to your to stick the 2B pencil into your left temple because it hurts so much. Not to mention the wire might stick out at the very end at times, and it will poke into your flesh whenever you try to talk. That's not even half as bad as when you get ulcers, and whenever your mouth moves, the ulcer would rub up and down against the metal brackets, and you find every way to find a partition between the teeth and the ulcer itself. I tried so many different ways, I can actually write a book on it (I even tried Kleenex!).

That's not to mention when you have to have your teeth abstracted, or before that process when they force a rubber ring in between your teeth to create a sort of space to place in the brackets. I chewed down hard on a single piece of popcorn when that happened and cried right in front of the Plaza Singapura Box Office once. It was excruciating, and the experience of having your teeth abstracted is not something you want. The long ass needle that comes towards you as your lay helpless with your mouth opened, the sensation of that needle going up into your gum and the liquid that flows through until your head feels weak and numb. When I had that abstraction, the assistant held on to my head, and the dentist came with these giant pincers from outer space. Grabbed onto the teeth and started shaking it right and left, with the assistant struggling to hold on to my head. After half a minute of struggling, you feel and hear this ripping sound in your gum and you see your bloody tooth out of your mouth and in between the claws of the pincer, dripping saliva and blood. I remember walking out of the clinic after four tooth were plucked, and actually had drool all over the place because the anesthetic was too strong.

All those agony caused by a single group of masked villains, and the society embraces them...well, sort of. I know that people are probably better off with a nicer set of teeth, but then again not everybody is willing to visit the dentist to have their mouth scrubbed, plucked, picked, washed, polished and then reviewed. No, not everybody is willing to do that in our society. Of course, perfection comes with a price. But whoever set the rule that our teeth needs to be at a hundred percent? So what if this teeth is a little crooked, so what if it is a little dirty? Sometimes I wish that I can pry the mouth of every single dentist open, and if I find any decay or dirt I will drill them with my own pair of hands. "Don't worry!" I will say. "You guys done it on me a million times, I know how to work around it!"

Now my teeth feel like they were scrubbed by a giant polishing machine, the ones you see janitors pushing around in shopping malls and hotels. This is probably not going to last very long, but I am going to try to do whatever I can to keep it this way. Not really because of what the dentist tried to convince me to do, but really because I don't want to see her face again (Though, she was covered most of the time).

The suction tube that was stuck into my mouth made strange sucking sound, and it almost sounded like a bunch of people screaming at the same time. I swear, at the end of that tube there must have been an amplifier of some kind, and the sound I heard was my inner-being, screaming for somebody to stab the dentist with a dental hook. The light on top looked like something out of a Star Wars movie, or the mechanical probe from War of the Worlds, glaring down at me emotionless and almost deadly. Now, this is how turkeys feel on Christmas time, when they lie on top of chopping boards. The inevitable pain followed by the helplessness that you feel afterwards. I might swear off turkey and chicken, depending on the situation from now on. Thank God I wasn't skinned, had my hair plucked, or had garlic stuffed up my ass.

But still, I hate experiences at dentists, and the worse part is that they almost make it sound like they are trying to help you, when all they want is more plastics with Yusof Ishak on it. In Singapore, people always say that it is better off dead than to be sick, and that is true. My mother's breast scans cost two hundred dollars. Two pieces of X-Rays and a ten minute consultation, that's it. In Taiwan, the same price with fifty dollars added can get you a full body checkup. Now, that's exploitation for you guys, keep that in mind. Better die than sick in Singapore, especially when you have dental problems. Knock some teeth out with a hammer and a vice, you might save some bucks for the soccer betting season coming up.