The Dental Chair

This story takes place in Orlando while I was stationed there pre-Disney.  If you read The Flag story you already have the basic setting.  The Naval Training Center in Orlando was situated on an old Air Force base.  There was a main gate and a back gate.  Just beyond the back gate were the base dental offices.

Since free dental care was one of the “bennies” that came with my “voluntary” service, I took advantage of that care whenever needed.  This particular story was at a time when I needed to have some work done on two lower teeth.  It was also a time when the Navy was remodeling their dental offices.

The old barbershop style dental chairs were being replaced with the ultra-modern curved lounges that you still find today.  I have to say that the old patient chairs seemed to be a holdover from the days when barbers and dentists were the same guy.  At least that was what one learned from old westerns.  The barber could also be the town surgeon.

Old Style Dentist Chair

The Navy never did anything suddenly.  They phased in the new dental lounge chairs long before they replaced the other furniture in the office.  This meant that while I was this day reclining at a low height in the new contour lounge, the dentist and his assistant were perched on tall stools.  Even at their lowest setting the stools were still too tall for the low position of my lounge patient chair.

New Style Dentist Chair

The procedure this day involved two cavities and two fillings on two adjoining lower front teeth.  The dentist told me that he would be using a new technique with a new filling material.  He would do both fillings at the same time.  He drilled, buffed, sanded, and sprayed the way dentists still do today.  Then he came to the double front filling procedure he would be doing.  All went well and when he came to the part where the new filling material needed to set up he announced that he wanted to show off his handiwork to the other dentists in the office.  He left the room to gather some admirers. 

I was left behind in my reclining position.  Left with me was his female dental assistant.  Not just any female dental assistant, but the type of dental assistant that a dentist would have if he could design her himself using the best components from the Miss World competition.  His top-heavy and very attractive assistant was left beside me on her tall perch.  She wore a tight skirt and tight blouse.  It was her job to use a probe to test how the new filling material was setting.

My Dental Assistant, Sketched from Memory

She would twist and lean over from her high perch and had to virtually lie across my body in order to get in a proper position to inspect the new fillings.  It was during one of these thoroughly enjoyable probes that the dentist walked in with his entourage.  As everyone filed into the room the dentist asked, “Is it hard yet?” Whereupon I quickly answered, “You bet it is.”  The technician’s face flushed and four dentists broke out in hysterical laughter.  One dentist left the room.  I think he wet himself.