‘Did it hurt, Mr V?’
Posted by schoolspirit on 9th July 2008
‘You don’t have to brush your teeth - just the ones you want to keep.’ - Author Unknown
‘A good friend is cheaper than therapy.’ - Author Unknown
Had my first tooth pulled today.
Now, I haven’t been to the dentist in about sixteen years. Never a filling, never a toothache. Once I had the braces removed I pretty much abandoned all interest in ever setting foot into another dental clinic of any sort again. And until February, I didn’t.
Now, sixteen years is not bad, I reckon, for looking after your teeth on your own. Not bad at all. At least, until a few of them started to fall apart on my while I was eating about a year or so back. I pondered the problem for a few weeks as I continued to find little bits of enamel in my dinner, but before too long they seemed to stop disintegrating, and even better, they didn’t ache or hurt. So I ignored them.
Then I noticed another threatening to do the same. So I bit the bullet (pardon the pun), and wandered into the local dentist clinic I hadn’t set foot in for the better part of sixteen years. I wasn’t even on their records any more!
They couldn’t fit me in for about six months, so I wandered down the street to the next clinic and asked about a check up.
‘When was your last one?’ they asked.
‘Aw, really early nineties?’ I answered.
‘And you still have your teeth?’
They fit me in and I had a check up. Short story was, two had to be pulled, and three had to be filled. I thought that was a pretty good score considering the time between visits and my irregular brushing. So I made the appointments and finally had the first last week to put three fillings in. Unfortunately, then they noticed there were two more fillings to be done and a third tooth to be pulled. Bugger.
So I wandered in this afternoon to have the next appointment. Fill another tooth, and pull the first one out. I wasn’t too concerned now about the filling and the needles - they’ve improved since the last time I had one in my mouth, but the extraction was concerning me if I’m honest. I asked him to talk me through it, but I figured I’d only feel uncomfortable and hear the odd crack and splintering sound. Any aches would come after the happy juice had worn off.
Short story again, it came out before I realised it as I didn’t actually feel it come loose. Yes, I felt the wriggling and levering and rocking stuff as my head rolled from side to side, and at one point I was concerned he would stretch the corner of my mouth too far and it would get the dental equivalent of a hamstring tear, but it was quite a simple procedure.
I wandered out able to talk with no pain and only half a box of tissues jammed in the hole in the back of my mouth.
So I wandered into the shopping centre for a quick browse because you don’t drive into town with petrol the way it is without making at least some effort to make it worth your while, eh?
Which is when I ran into one of the kids. Not just any kid from school, the little feller from the basketball team. By the way, they lost the grand final the other week. It’s a shame, but you don’t win them all. If you did, you’d have no reason to play, eh?
Now, most kids when they see a teacher will do one of two things. Wave with a slightly awkward, nervous smile, sometimes with a slight hint of guilt, or look the other way and hope to hell you haven’t seen them. Well, this kid’s different, at least when it comes to me, I suppose.
He ran half way around the plaza to catch me, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, to rabbit on about the things he’d just bought with his family and we wandered back to the checkout. After all, we hadn’t caught up with each other for, aw, twelve whole days. Twelve days is almost forever when you’re twelve, eh?
‘What are you doin’ here, Mr V? Shopping or something?’ Note the hint of boredom in the word ’shopping’, clearly something he thought wasn’t high on the list of ‘cool reasons to walk around the plaza’.
‘Actually, champ, I just had a tooth pulled…’
The sudden look of caring concern and the subdued voice asking ‘did it hurt?’ just made my day.
Better than a panadol, that was.
Posted in Extra Curricular, Other Interests, Teaching Kids | 3 Comments »



Right from the very first, I should probably lay my cards out on the table. I’m not a dedicated convert to the global warming or climate change phenomenon. I’d like to think of myself as a healthy, albeit slightly suspicious, cynic in regards to many of the arguments (if they can be called that) predicting the end of the world due to this nasty carbon stuff. It’s only fair that I say this up front before moving on to the main topic of this post, which is the now global event called
Yup. I don’t really understand how it came about, but we just lost our last indoor cricket match of the season which dropped us from third to fourth place. Usually that would mean we were playing off against the top team next week for the right to play in the grand final. Seems that when you’re playing in a mixed A and B grade competition, they do things a little differently.
Today was the final week of the regular local cricket season. For myself, an eternal C Grade player because I’m really not the greatest cricketer going around, and not wanting to play two week matches in B Grade anyway, the season finished a week early with a bye this week. But… that gave us the chance to wander across the district to a little township further north to watch B Grade try to win their match in the hopes of making the finals next week.