It all started about a month ago when I was chewing a piece of gum. I bit down and felt a sharp pain in my back molars. After an hour or so, the pain died down, but ever since then, that tooth has ached a bit and been very sensitive to cold. The ignore-it-and-hope-it-goes-away-by-itself method of dental care wasn’t working for me, so I made an appointment with my dentist.
My dentist looked around in my mouth and said I had an older filling that might be coming loose. He recommended removing and replacing it, and I agreed. He called over his assistant and began talking with her about Novocaine. I told him I didn’t want any. He flat out said he wouldn’t work on me without it.
I tried to explain to him that the only time I’ve had Novocaine in the past 30 years is when I had wisdom teeth pulled. I even pointed to my crown and told him I had had that put in without pain killers. He still insisted. I talked him down to a half dose of the most surface stuff he had.
He ground the old filling out and replaced it with a temporary filling. (He put in a temporary to make sure that a filling would solve the problem and that I didn’t need a crown before he went to the trouble of installing a permanent filling.) While he was putting the temporary in, I noticed a strong taste in my mouth. After he finished, he explained. It seems the stuff he used is some old fashioned mixture that dentists have been using forever but that still works just fine. The mixture includes clove oil for some reason. That’s what the taste was, cloves, and he told me I could expect to taste it for a while.
It was my wife’s birthday. When I got home from the dentist, I took her to a pancake house for supper. Fortunately the Novocaine had worn off. But the clove oil hadn’t. I ate clove-flavored bacon and eggs with clove-flavored pancakes and clove-flavored orange juice. My wife ordered a Dutch apple pancake. She gave me a bite, and I was surprised to discover that it was also clove-flavored.
From the restaurant we went to Target to buy a garbage can and a toilet seat. (I know how to celebrate a birthday, don’t I?) As we were checking out, the girl asked us if we needed any gift receipts. We looked at each other and laughed. My wife said, “Just on the toilet seat.”
From there we went to see a movie. We shared a clove-flavored box of Junior Mints. Before the movie began, we watched an advertisement for an opera. The ad said that the opera could be seen at the theater for a one-night-only special showing on December 17 with an encore showing on December 18. I’m not very good at math, but wouldn’t that be two nights?
As a topper for the evening, when we got home we discovered the toilet seat didn’t fit our toilet and the garbage can was dented. I brushed my teeth with clove-flavored toothpaste and went to bed.