I recently learned that the University of Pittsburgh has a famous and elite dental school,… I recently learned that the University of Pittsburgh has a famous and elite dental school, one of the best in the country. I did not learn this from a school counselor, or from U.S News and World Report, but rather from my dentist, as he prepared me for the torture that we commonly call “dental checkups.” I felt a weak pang of school pride, but it might have just been a pang from the needle he shoved into my jaw.

For as long as I can remember, I have never enjoyed the dentist’s office. I don’t much enjoy medical checkups or haircuts either, but there, at least, I have free use of my voice. I feel especially at the mercy of the dentist, as he fills my mouth with various metallic gizmos and says, “Lean your head back and open wide.”

Whether it is the Novocaine talking or just a rare moment of lucidity, I began to think about a question a friend of mine from Carnegie Mellon once asked me. She wondered where the idea for a blood transfusion came from. She pointed out that the idea seemed very unnatural, and wondered how it came into such wide acceptance and common usage.

I ridiculed her for such a dorky thought, but I couldn’t help but apply her words to my present situation.

It is a good question — what makes us place such great faith in dentists? How did we grow to trust them so much? I believe a look at history will help us to understand this.

We can view dentistry as an evolutionary process. Cavemen worried about their teeth could not really expect all the sophistication from their dentists that we can today. We have made huge progress in producing more and more little metal prongs — which look like medieval instruments of torture — which sat next to me as the good doctor played.

But, I digress. So Bob the caveman didn’t just go to his friend, Thog, and demand bridgework. More likely, it began one day when Thog, perhaps motivated by some primitive concept of envy, threw a massive rock at Bob’s face. Stealing his woman and cave, he knocked Bob’s head, in addition to several teeth, off.

Intrigued, Thog bent over and became the first person to view the human molar, thus beginning man’s insatiable desire to explore his own mouth. Since then, we have refined the process and technique of dentistry to the point where we consider it perfectly normal and safe to give ourselves over to a man who we know, and who tells us openly that he is going to insert a drill into our mouths and then ask us to pay him.

But this is not the worst part. Forget the fact that it may be odd, in the grand scheme of things, to have paid members of society torture others. My chief complaint is that the dentists are too pleasant about their jobs. When a man is drilling my mouth, I want it to be a bookie in a dank, dark room surrounded by his criminal assistants, and I want to be handcuffed to the chair, too tired and too beaten to put up a fight. It will probably involve gambling debt.

Instead, sadly, the dentist had a most upbeat demeanor. We sat in a well-lit office, complete with windows, background music and pictures of beaches as he began the drilling.

Whether bound by curiosity or the dentist’s code, he begins a conversation. He questions me for about five minutes about the University of Pittsburgh. I don’t know what he expected as an answer, but the avalanche of drool that fell from my numbed jaw must have been near the top of the list, because he already had a napkin in his hand as I tried to respond that yes, I enjoy Pitt.

I didn’t want to shrug off the dentist’s hospitality, because I think I remember hearing somewhere that dentists have the highest suicide rate of any profession. I don’t want to be mean to someone who might potentially be insane and who has ready access to both my throat and several torturous-looking power tools.

I would like to extend an open invitation to anyone who bothered to get this far to write in and defend dentistry. I believe dentistry today suffers because people just don’t trust dentists. They are kind, nice, pleasant, conversational and professional. Is that really how we want people whose job it is to rid our mouths of unwanted teeth to act?

E-mail Sam Morey your dentist stories at [email protected].