“What do you do in your spare time?”
“Ah guh higsing.”
“What?”
“Uh, I go fishing.”
Dentists asking questions while their hands are in patients’ mouths is a well-worn trope. But this comically befuddling stereotype is as sure as a thing as being told to floss more.
“Yeah, there is great fly fishing around here. I like rainbow trout, myself.”
“Ugh hugh.”
“Spit.”
“Thanks,”
In this little Pennsylvania town, most people were aware of the local trout fishing opportunities. They knew that folks came from hundreds of miles to stalk spring creeks. Dentists, needing to be active members of the community, were no exception. All three dentist offices I visited in my years living there had, at the very least, a copy of Field & Stream in the waiting room.
“Keep up the good work. Try to make sure you floss more. Oh, and don’t bite your line with your teeth.”
Along with a $25 copay, I got a mixed bag of feedback. I brushed well enough to warrant a positive comment. Flossing that morning for the first time in the past six months obviously didn’t qualify as “regular flossing.” And apparently I was not supposed to use my mouth to clip tippet.
Of course I used my teeth to bite through 5X. Did I have a half dozen pair of nippers that could do the job adequately? Yes. But every second counts while fishing. And, more importantly, I don’t want to be bothered to reach for them if I don’t have to. There is a fine line between laziness and efficiency.
Later that season, I was standing in a favorite stream. Eyeing the channel, I made some decisions regarding my approach. A new fly was selected. A new knot was tied. A tag end had to be trimmed. Instead of reaching down to locate my nippers, I put the fly to my lips. As I had done countless times before, I moved the fly back from my front teeth to leave enough tag in case the knot tightened up a bit more. Then I bit down.
The sensation of biting into nothing when you’re biting is disconcerting.
Even more disconcerting was the *plop* that happened subsequent to the bite.
The monofilament was the straw that broke the incisor’s back. And the last time I saw it, it was drifting downstream into the waving grasses of the spring creek. Looking like a yokel didn’t bother me. The inevitable cost wasn’t even that much of a discouragement. But getting to the dentist before his office closed meant leaving the stream before a single cast. This was the only time I ever did such a think. It took losing a body part to get me in and out of waders without fishing.
Graciously, my dentist wasn’t in. I didn’t have to hear his “told you so.” I’m not easily shamed, but there is something about getting reprimanded while sitting in a medical chair with a bright light in your face. All was well that ended well. His hygienist did a marvelous job reconstructing the bottom half of my tooth with some sort of fancy dental resin.
And I also like to think that my tooth, not my fly, drifted down to the trout I was fishing for that day. He swam those waters for the rest of his days smiling with one, moderately flossed tooth in his mouth.