I WENT to see the dentist. He looked at my teeth and said I needed seven fillings. I got really scared. Cookie said that fillings are the worst because you sometimes have to get a needle in your mouth. It’s called freezing. She said it hurts worse if you don’t get the needle. The dentist doesn’t believe in freezing, but if kids start screaming he gives it to them in their gums.
Mr. Oiko sent some of us to the nurse’s room. We sat on chairs outside and listened to the kids crying and screaming in there, and something that sounded like a sewing machine. We could hear a man’s voice snarling. One of the kids whispered that he slapped a grade five girl because she turned her head away and broke the needle in her mouth. One of the grade twos came out holding her mouth with blood seeping through a white bandage and rolling down her chin. She was crying, and she wouldn’t look at us.
Then it was my turn, and I felt like I had a bellyache. The dentist looked at me and told me to sit in this big chair that moved up and down. He was holding a needle. He put it down and made me open my mouth. He looked around my mouth with a little mirror on a little silver handle. He poked at my teeth with a silver tool. His hand smelled like soap. He had on thick glasses, and he was really big. He growled, “Get your TONGUE out of the way.” Everything he said was like a growl. Move your HEAD back. Don’t close your MOUTH. Keep STILL. OPEN YOUR MOUTH!
When he said I had to get seven fillings I thought I was going to get them done right away, and I felt like my blood was draining from my body.
Then he told me to leave and come back the next day. I had a bellyache all night. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to eat. It reminded me of a book I read called A Tale of Two Cities. This guy Charles Darnay knew he was going to the guillotine the next day to get his head chopped off. That’s how I felt.
This time when I went to the dentist at least I was ready. I sat in the chair and held onto the chair sides until my hands and arms and neck ached while he drilled my teeth. That drill sounded like a scream. At first it didn’t hurt. Then it felt like a hot knife, and I started to groan and he pulled the drill out. Then he heated up some metal and pushed it into the hole he made. He made big ones, and now my teeth are all ugly.
I couldn’t believe I needed seven fillings because they said you only have to get fillings if your teeth are partly rotten or have black dots on them. Mine were all white, except for one small dot. Cookie says the dentist gets so much money for each filling and each tooth he pulls. He takes them out with a tool that looks like a pair of pliers.