Sands of Life

By Vincent

My experience with childhood dentistry in 1960s suburbia…equal parts trauma, nitrous, and one very wet pair of pants. 

As a kid, there was nothing more terrifying or oddly exhilarating than a trip to the dentist. Dentistry in the 1960s wasn’t the sleek, spa-like experience you see today. No, back then it was straight-up medical horror. Digging in someone’s pie hole, complete with funk, junk, saliva, stink, goop, and sometimes even blood. Why the hell would anyone choose this profession? Honestly, wouldn’t proctology be more appealing? At least with that gig, it’s predictably full of shit.

My dentist…let’s call him Dr. Wasser to protect the innocent (or guilty)…was a lanky guy with overgrown eyebrows, salt-and-pepper hair, thick black-rimmed glasses, and breath that could clear a room. A genuinely nice man, but scary as hell. He had the social presence of a wet sponge and the appearance of a horror movie villain moonlighting as a chemistry teacher complete with a black rubber smock. His wife, the office manager sat meekly behind a black desk with dark brown Formica top. A thin woman with reddish Peppermint Patty hair, sat just behind a small 1/2 wall answering phones, stuffing envelopes, typewriter blazing and seemingly forcing a smile with a sheepish “hello Vincent “ as I walked in with my Mother.  Anyone could see they were meant for one another. The wet sponge thing must run through the family!

The waiting room was a monument to mid-century discomfort: faux oak paneling with those deep brown grooves, yellow stained 12×12 ceiling tiles, and sickly-colored modern lighting that buzzed like an angry bee. Plastic flowers that never ever changed for YEARS! Every time he needed assistance, a bell would ring, and a young dental assistant would sprint down the short hallway like a prisoner making a break for it. Today that’s a civil rights violation or very minimum labor law violation! The high-pitched whine of the dental drill echoed through the place, drilling straight into my young, anxiety filled heart. It felt like a cardiac episode in slow motion…but hey, I was young. I could take it.

Then came the voice:
“Just breathe deeply…”

Ah yes, the gas. The sweet escape. The only thing I actually looked forward to.

Nitrous oxide: my Dentist, my first dealer.

A rubber balloon on my stomach, a tan hose strapped to my face like some post-apocalyptic scuba diver complete with a cold shiny metal nose cone and the world began to melt away. I’d get so high I wouldn’t have cared if he pulled one of my eyes out. As a kid, I didn’t understand it….but looking back, maybe it was Dr. Wasser who kick started my brief career in recreational drug abuse. “Just breathe deeply”. Who needed peer pressure when your dental office handed out the good stuff?

Then the real horror would begin. The drilling. The filling. The tools that sounded like they were designed for auto body work. My head would rattle, my jaw would lock, and still he’d shout:

“Open wide, wider”!

As if I hadn’t already dislocated my god damn jaw trying. Numb to the world, spinning in my nitrous fog, he’d jam that drill into my mouth like he was mining for silver. Which, ironically, is exactly what he put in there: mercury-laced silver fillings that are still riding shotgun in my molars to this day.

And yet, somehow, the worst part was after the high wore off,,,when the gas was cut, the lights came back on, and I realized I was soaking wet. Shirt collar damp down into my undershirt below, pants clinging to my knees. Not from fear, but from the great flood.

Years later, my new dentist Dr. Post, I think of cereal every time I say his name, a young fit, great sense of humor guy who purchased the practice, casually explained after a much more pleasant torture session in my mouth when I asked: “Doc, do you have different equipment or something?”,  “ I’m usually soaked after all of this !”

“Oh yeah—Wasser? The mad scientist! ” “He didn’t know how to adjust the cavitron. Sprayed water all over goddamn Ossining.”

And it all made sense.

The black rubber smock. The full face shield. He wasn’t protecting himself from my funk and junk….he was shielding himself from his own incompetence. Every cleaning felt like dental waterboarding.

But then….the prize. The Treasure Chest.

Every kid who survived got to open that glorious wooden box filled with plastic toys from the local Tops store and pic a toy. Dr. Wasser’s Treasure Chest. A bribe? Absolutely. Brilliant marketing? Without question. And to top it off? A lollipop. Because nothing says “Thanks for sitting through dental trauma” like giving a kid pure sugar right after a filling. That’s like a cardiologist handing out bacon-wrapped cigarettes.

And yet, there I was. Cleaned. Filled. Baked. Soaked. Rewarded.

All in under an hour.

Looking back, it was insane. But it was also perfectly of its time,,,equal parts absurd,,,traumatic,,,and strangely formative. That office on the top of Church Street in Ossining NY with its view of the Hudson River and the Palisades, its smells, sounds, and horror-movie haze…it’s burned into my hard drive forever.

So thanks, Dr. Wasser, for the laughs, the toy, the lollipops, and the lingering dental PTSD. Today would be considered child abuse and endangerment!

And for my first real high.