Alan And The Tooth Fairy

Every few months I visit a charming young lady and pay her very large amounts of money. In return for this emolument, she rubs her breasts all over my head. Strangely this gives me no pleasure.

You see, the charming young lady is simply using my head as a convenient support over which she angles her body into the position that gives her the optimum leverage for attacking my wide open mouth with instruments of torture. She is my dental hygienist, and we have an uneasy relationship.

I visited her again this month.

"Hello," she said, "how are you?"

"Fine thanks," I said. "How are you?"

She looked a little puzzled at this response. I think she was expecting me to say, "I' ine, acks. 'ow ah oo?"

Members of the dental profession are only completely comfortable when talking to supine people whose conversation consists simply of vowels and glottal stops; the only sounds that can be made when your mouth is wide open and full of sterile metal. Complete words that are filled with consonants are not something that dentists hear very often. Consequently they seldom know how to react when such words are spoken to them.

"Lie back on the couch," she said.

I did so, and she slipped some safety glasses over my eyes in case a randomly flung tooth should chance to crash into an eye socket and blind me for life – a scenario I find extremely unlikely since I always screw my eyes tight shut in order to avoid examining the various scrapers, wrenches, gougers, drills, saws, chisels and hammers too closely.

"Open wide!"

I opened wide. She thrust her left breast into my right ear and began to scrape and saw and drill and hammer at my teeth with exuberant enthusiasm. I really like seeing people who enjoy their work so much. Within limits, of course.

"Hmm," she said as she lined up a chisel and hit it a couple of times with a large yellow hammer, "that's a particularly resistant lump of plaque." She changed the angle of the chisel slightly and hit it again, but the plaque remained stubbornly in place. "I think it needs extreme measures," she decided.

She attacked my tooth with a pneumatic drill, not dissimilar to those with which council workmen dig up roads. She drilled a deep hole, stuffed it full of dynamite, attached a detonator and led wires back from the detonator to a switch. She went behind a screen and flipped the switch.

BANG!

Plaque crashed down in a huge avalanche from around my teeth. She came back from behind the screen and said, "Rinse out, please."

I rinsed out my mouth and spat into the bowl. A big, nasty lump the size and shape of a small alp went clang! into the bowl and cracked the porcelain from side to side. I lay back down and opened my mouth. She repositioned her breasts and resumed scraping.

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.

Faint abdominal rumblings came from some hidden place deep within the hygienist. The noise made her vibrate pleasantly. She ignored the sounds and carried on scraping and, being a gentleman, I too did my best to pay no attention to the incipient volcano standing beside me.

GURGLE, GURGLE!!!

Some things simply cannot be ignored.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That's my tummy rumbling. It always does that at this time of day."

I couldn't help myself, and I started to laugh. That set her off, and we giggled companionably together for a time.

"I think my tummy needs some food," she admitted. She stared vacantly into space, obviously dreaming about roast turkey and stuffing; caviar and chips. I took the opportunity to rinse and spit. She'd been very heavy handed with her power tools and there was quite a lot of blood. I stared at it with gloomy suspicion.

"I could cook you a black pudding," I suggested.