Tooth Doctor

I went to the dentist today for a cleaning. It was good because I hadn't been to a dentist in a couple years so I felt like I needed it. But they did a very thorough cleaning. First the assistant x-rayed my mouth from a hundred different angles. Then I waited for a while. They didn't have a very wide selection of magazines, but I found an interesting article in Ebony about the lack of black/African-American baseball players these days. Then a pretty young-looking woman (as in fairly young-looking, not pretty and young-looking) came to clean my teeth. She introduced herself as "doctor" whatever her name was, but are dentists really doctors? I guess they can be. What are the degrees with which people can call themselves doctors? Okay did a little research on that (i.e. looked it up on Wikipedia). According to the all-knowing Wikipedia contributors, dentists can call themselves doctors, since a dental degree is considered a "professional doctorate," not to be confused with a "research doctorate," which is way better (partly because that's what I'm going to get). So anyway, the doctor/dentist first measured all the gaps between my teeth and my gums and read them off to her assistant. Apparently I've been brushing my teeth too hard in a couple places, causing my gums to recede. Then she cleaned my teeth with one of those pointy things with the water sprayer while her assistant was sticking that vacuum thing in my mouth. I kept wanting to swallow and kind of gulping because I couldn't close my mouth. It would have been nice if she gave me a little break once in a while. After that she scraped around with the pointy metal scraper thing (I'm sure they have technical names for all of these things). Then she told me I didn't have any cavities. Duh, I haven't had a cavity since I was a kid. Because I brush my teeth so hard my gums are receding. After she scraped my teeth and gave me a clean bill of dental health (aside from brushing too hard), the assistant tried to rip my teeth out of my mouth using only a single strand of floss. She told me I didn't floss enough because my gums were bleeding. Then she polished my teeth and I was finally done. The best part was I didn't have to pay for anything because my insurance covers it. Phew. My gums/mouth hurt for a couple hours afterwards. I just brushed my teeth, nice and softly, and they bled a bit. But no pain no gain, right? Maybe not. I'm not sure if that applies to oral hygiene.

Wow, why would anyone want to read this?