Open wide please!

Wednesday, September 18 08

At 10 o'clock Mrs Bennet had the chance to be without all five of her daughters and to sit down for half an hour. The only sting in the tail was the fact she was sitting in the dentist's chair. However unlike the unfortunate tooth incident during a wet week under canvas, this dentist was dishy and if she wasn't married and about 20 years younger, she would have perhaps fluttered her eyelashes at him. But respectable wives with five children, fast approaching 40, didn't do such things. Well they might, but she wasn't one of them. She just flirted with a cup of hot frothy coffee, which didn't count. This morning's drilling, was the final chapter in the holiday dentist saga. To recap, she had woken up a bald-headed middle-aged man on a Saturday morning, forcing him to get into his very expensive soft-topped vehicle and fly to her aid to rid her of the unbearable pain, which three days earlier he'd charged £40 to tell her was a pulled muscle. He'd taken off a filling, to put a temporary one on, and now she was paying to have that one removed and a permanent one put back.
"I'm definitely in the wrong job. But I wouldn't want to look down throats all day long. Although drilling must be kind of fun when it's not done on yourself," she thought.
It helped that her dentist was young, friendly and like Mr Bennet had a nice smile, which showed off his perfect teeth. In her mid 20's when she had first set eyes on the young Mr Bennet, it was his long-lashed blue eyes and gorgeous smile which had impressed her. He was a good advert for teeth, unlike herself, who seemed to be taking a dentist residency. However she wished to add her teeth were fine before she had had children. She'd only had this conversation yesterday with a dear friend and fellow mother who was also forking out a fortune for dental treatment. She'd lost a gold crown and was paying dearly for it.
"My mum told me you lose two teeth for every child you have," she'd informed Mrs Bennet.
"I may as well order my dentures now then!" Mrs Bennet replied, "Although 10 teeth might fetch a fair price from the tooth fairy!"
It was the first question she'd asked the dentist when she sat in his chair. His assistant replied:
"I think the story's got exaggerated in time. My mum told me it was one tooth per child."
"Still five teeth is still too many for me," declared Mrs Bennet, who resolved never to eat another toffee in her life.
She kept quiet after that. Well she could hardly say much, with a drill in her mouth, a numbed jaw and two faces peering over her. She tried to relax as Terry Wogan rambled on in the corner of the room. She shut her eyes and pretended she wasn't there. For a moment, she was on a beach, lying in a hammock, enjoying the warm sea breeze with a rum and coke in hand. Until she had to raise her hand to spit out the potent taste which was filling her mouth. Mrs Bennet could think of a better and cheaper way to spend 30 minutes without children.