I don't do needles

My parents tell me they made a choice when I was first born - give him really strong drugs that might weaken his teeth, or not give him really string drugs and let him die. I have this very early memory of my mom/dad/me spilling the medicine on my "blanky" and destroying it. Mom cut out a small piece for me to keep, but for the most part is was trashed.

Move ahead to many moons ago - I was eating a sandwich (ham, most likely) when I bit down on a *crunch* sensation. Gross, was my first thought. I fished out a white piece of something sharp. It was the front of my tooth. It has sheared off the front half. Needless to say, I called mom and told her we needed to call the dentist and fix this shit now!

Lets back track a little...I have the very fond memory of screaming in the dentists chair, as he was ripping out 1 of 4 teeth that session "I CAN STILL FEEL..." I had been injected into my gums the anesthetic that was SUPPOSE to numb me, but alas it did not. I know my mother heard me screaming from the waiting room (she was, after all, working for the good doc at the time). After it was all done, I swore I'd never take a needle in the gums again, no matter what.

slob? I floss. I Brush. I drink as ass load of soda. That might be one reason. So I head into the dentist this morning to have 2 taken care of. Seems the filling from the "sheared off tooth" incident was all So it turns out at the ripe age of 30 I have, what was it, 4 cavities! What I am, an unkemptfugly, and the one next to it needed to be taken care of as well. I ask the assistant:

Umm, do you plan on shooting me in the gums to numb me up?

Yes.

Right, I don't do that.

No anesthesia?

No, I don't do needles in the gum. You guys can give me a topical, but I don't do that...

So very nicely, she writes a note on a stikie and pastes it to my chart: NO SHOTS. As I'm talking to the assistant about holiday shopping, she looks away and has a brief conversation with the doc. "We're talking about you. That you don't do shots..."

So the doctor rolls over and looks at me perplexed "So, you don't do shots? Topical won't do anything, so if you won't do a shot, you'll feel it." I answer "I've had 4 teeth pulled with all feeling, I'll be ok." She looks at me "4 ADULT teeth pulled? You've had 4 ADULT teeth?" I say "Yup." NOW, they might have been adult, they might have been baby, but hell if I was going to have anyone stick a god-damn needle in my gums. So she starts in. Drills away. I focus on a spot. I'm more concerned about the congestion running down my throat preventing me from breathing 100% then I am with the pain.

The good doctor pauses, so I think, and looks at me "Wow, you're amazing. You didn't even flinch. 99.9% of the people I've seen couldn't do what you just did - and I've seen a lot. You're awesome. How do you do it?" I tell her that I've been fortunate enough to inherit a high tolerance for pain. My legacy spreads across the whole office. I can feel the vibe...ok, now I'm totally embellishing for the sake of ego.

So while I'm sitting there, waiting to have my teeth filled, I ask the assistant to help me take this picture. This is the before. This is when I had all my nerves exposed to the world...and I didn't even flinch. At one point I looked up and said "Dustin Hoffman's got nothing on me..." I'm not sure if they got it.