I don’t understand dentists. I’m not implying that they speak an entirely different language or whatever. I just don’t get what could possibly inspire someone to decide that they would absolutely love to pursue a career that involves looking into people’s mouths and poking around. It’s beyond me.

To a degree, you can sort of understand the motivation behind becoming a Gynaecologist (you know you can)…I mean you’ve got to get ‘some’ any which way you can, right? But to be a dentist… I don’t know.

I was at the dentist’s the other day and I was trying to figure it out.

I hoped to become a doctor when I was young, look at where I am now. In hindsight, I suspect I didn’t really give a shit about the field of medicine; I was freaked out by injections, when I flunked my examinations in the field of sciences I didn’t sit down and whine thinking my career was being compromised… I was put off by the number of years I’d have to sit behind a desk poring over questions glancing at me from the face of an examination sheet. I also had that niggling feeling that whatever examination dared cross paths with the examiners pen would come out on the losing end of things…

Then we have dentists.

When you see your dentist, consider this for a second; whilst you thought about waking up and going to your desk and playing touchy-feely with your keyboard, there was a guy or gal somewhere in the same class that couldn’t wait to dive into your mouth… well, not your necessarily.

Put another way, when you were checking out some lad or lass and thinking about placing your lips on their’s or, if you were the daring kind, playing hide and go seek with his or her tonsoles aided by your tongue, there was someone somewhere marveling at the delicate structure of teeth that stood between you and your ultimate prize (again, this is written with the deep seated belief that every young boy or girl attempted to play with a partner’s epiglottis)

When I think about occupational hazards, all that comes to mind is possibility that my PC will explode and the shrapnel will fly every which way and, if it so wishes, take abode somewhere in my body.

Sitting in the dentist’s chair, I couldn’t help but think, would it be so bad if I bit down really hard on his fingers? I mean, surely you get into this stuff knowing exactly what you are getting into. I suspect my eyes may have betrayed my intentions, because as that idea was starting to progress past a crawl and starting to get on its legs he stuffed a rubber something or other between my teeth.

Maybe it’s the power that comes with it. Face it. You can rig all the elections you want, go to the bush fire off a few shots, but ultimately, your dentist has you right where he wants you.

I don’t care that you may be Golola Moses or his idol, everyone is freaked out by the dentist. It’s probably all those tools on the tray next to you. Just lying there shining and glistening as if to say, ‘your teeth and I, we have a date. Some shit’s going to go down, but it won’t be consensual”. I was looking at them the other day and seriously weighed the merits of yanking out all my teeth and resigning myself to a life of soggy foodstuffs.

I went through a list of items that could be ‘soggified’ (no, it’s not a word) and was doing pretty well until I got to pizza. You just can’t do soggy pizza…or pork.

Is that it then?

When we are going through the motions and rigours of academia, is that what’s driving some of our peers, the prospect of clinging on to power without some annoying dude screaming AT YOU saying you have become corrupted by power?

The fact that you will hold such copious amounts of power and no one will bug you about fixing a road, building a school, destroying the school and then selling the land to investors? Is that what it’s all about?

Nuh, that ain’t it all… I think it comes down to trying to make a difference.

That’s right, you look around you at all the pain and injustice in the world and think, ‘man, people shouldn’t have to move around with their teeth looking like that’ and you decide right then and there that your mission in life is to uphold the tooth…teeth… it works better singularly anyway, so, yeah, uphold the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth, so help me…

It’s oft been suggested that there’s a great deal of money in dentistry. In essence, this is where the whole detoothing spiel kicks in… I think. But come on, there are other ways to make money.

Don’t get it twisted, I respect dentists. I admire the trade to a degree. As my dentist hacks and cracks in there, I can’t help but marvel over the finesse.

BUT

If I had to choose, I’d sooner be a gynecologist.

Then again, one man’s mouth is another man’s v…..