Track Changes

I go to the dental hygienist for the first time in almost a year. She is a small lady from Argentina who doesn’t say much until my mouth is full of tubes.

Only then does she try to start a conversation. Always when she is pulling plaque out the back of my gums and the suction tube is guttering saliva out my mouth. It’s an endearing habit. On anyone else it would be a pain, but she always has a smile on her face.

“You smoke?” She says, when it is all over. I shake my head. “Ah, maybe it is the coffee that is staining your teeth.”

“Don’t make me drink coffee with a straw,” I say. She laughs. “Haha, no. I tell that to my patients but I know they won’t do it. I can’t do it. How can I expect them to?”

At the desk, as I’m paying, the friendly receptionist hands me a pile of gum cleaners. “Look at the size 9s,” he says, opening a box of black teeth cleaners.

I look inside the box, a row of black picks stare back at me. Each with a cleaning brush the size of a small cocktail sausage.

“You don’t need them now but maybe in twenty years, eh?”