Dental Spa

My dentist recently moved his office to a new building. The new office is much nicer than the old one; bigger, more spacious, better parking and, get this, there's a flat-screen LCD TV mounted over each of the chairs so that each patient can watch TV whilst having their teeth drilled or cleaned or whatever it is they're having done. The hygienist who cleaned my teeth during my last visit explained that the TVs help to relax some of the more nervous patients who tend to be jittery about the idea of a dentist probing their mouths with sharp instruments. Well yes, I suppose so ... as long as they don't hook the monitors up to a DVD player showing "Marathon Man". The icing on the cake is the dentist's personal office. The chair on which he reclines his patients actually has a built-in massage.

"So, how do you like the new office?" asked the hygienist. (Why do they always wait until your mouth is full of tubes and hoses before asking their questions?)

"It's good to see where all my money has gone," I answered, taking advantage of the split-second that it took her to move a tube from one side of my mouth to the other. (You get good at these things after enough visits to the dentist).

"Like, I must've heard that from just about everyone who's come in here today!" she gasped, rolling her eyes. Hey, don't ask the question if you're not sure you want to hear the answer.

Seriously, though, I have to commend my dentist. Sure, he obviously does pretty well, but at least he's put some of that money back into making his patients' experience a more comfortable and pleasant one. He could just as easily have kept the old office and used the extra cash to build himself a swimming pool or buy a new Mercedes. I wasn't being completely cynical. It really is good to see where all my money has gone. My dentist beats my government in that way.