Minding The Gap

A couple of years back I had a filling put in. It must have been a damn good filling; I say this because the tooth in which it was residing has just disintegrated, yet the filling is standing firm. It now looks a bit like one of those odd rock formations you see at the end of cliffs, prompting parents to say things to their kids like “Ooh, isn’t that fascinating Hugo. Why don’t you take a picture so you can take it home and show it to your teacher?” Because he’ll look like a pompous brown-nosed twat and all the other kids will beat him up, that’s why.

The perishing of my tooth means a very bad thing: a visit to the dentist is required. Possibly the most traumatic event of my formative years took place in a dentist’s chair and involved a bad tooth, a pair of pliers and a badly administered anaesthetic. I supposed he thought my screams of anguish were bogus and nothing to do with the fact he had numbed the wrong part of my face. To make matters intensely worse, one of the roots snapped when the tooth came out, meaning a further ten minutes of digging and grappling before he was done.

I’m not in any hurry to relive the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me, but my rock formation needs taking care of somehow. I’m currently brushing around it with all the delicacy of a man attempting to remove a testicle from a hastily fastened zip. Sooner or later I’m going to knock it out and then I’ll just be left with a nerve-ending crying “Fire me up boys! It’s pain-makin’ time!” And then I guess I’ll be left with little choice.

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