I had my first filling put in this morning. The dentist gave me three shots of novocaine before my lip started tingling so he could proceed with matters. I don’t know if those three shots were necessary, or if he was just impatient.

My dentist is always very complimentary about my teeth. He repeatedly describes them as "perfect" and "wonderful" and so on. I suppose he’s talking about them from a dental health point of view, rather than an aesthetic standpoint, considering that I’m gap-toothed (in spite of expensive orthodonture) and a candidate for one of those tooth-whitening toothpastes.

But he’s always complimenting me on my teeth; it’s a little ridiculous. I suppose that dentists are used to carrying the balance of the conversation, considering, so they are bound to ramble. And after the weather and whatnot, what is there left to say? It’s not like my dentist and I are on intimate terms, though I’ve been seeing him for as long as I can remember.

Are there people out there with really low self-esteem about their teeth that their dentists need to be reassuring them all the time? Is this some new mandate on chair-side manner from the ADA? Whatever, it makes me feel especially silly, since I don’t take very good care of my teeth. I brush once a day and rarely floss. I walk away from the dentist feeling I don’t deserve the good dental health I actually have.

What have I done to deserve such "perfect" teeth, I wonder? And meanwhile, there’s some poor schlub who brushes four times a day, flosses, uses Listerine, refrains from sugar and has major dental surgery every other year. He’s just living for one kind word from his dentist, and I’m swimming in undeserved praise. But who said life was fair, right? I know my dentist didn’t.