Torture chair
Last Monday morning found me miserable. I had to decide — writhe in pain or go the Tom Sawyer way and allow the doc to pull out my tooth. Probably no one likes the idea of sitting on a dentist’s chair. This fear is so strong most of the time that it could be defined surely as a phobia. I have never experienced more irrational fear than that connected to visiting a dentist. Ogden Nash once rightly said, “Some tortures are physical, some are mental, but the one that is both is dental.” After two-three visits to him, I realised that I do not fear my dentist (a handsome man) as a person. I quiver when I think of sitting in that horrendous chair and seeing the torture tools — squeezers, dentures, forceps, spray guns, syringes, pluckers, cotton swabs and other equipment. I shudder to think that someone would drill my teeth. The idea of someone doing something with my teeth scares the devil out of me. “The filling for the upper right tooth has come off,” Mr Dentist had told me on my last visi