We're great, if you can wait.

I've been to a number of student-training type clinics in my day-- from the bumble & bumble free haircut school in NYC to the Aveda Institute $14 haircut in Minneapolis to, most recently, the technical college in town this morning to get my teeth cleaned. For $25! A common thread here is saving money. Since I work in the legal equivalent of these, I have started to feel a kind of kinship. "No, I'm not an attorney... but we're very thorough and all of my work is checked by an attorney!" So I was willing to scheduled 3.5 hours of the day, from 7:30-11 this morning so a nice girl named Michelle could learn how to be a dental hygienist on me. As they say around my clinic, "we do great work, if you can wait."

What was funniest about it was how similar it was to going to university health services for gyno exams. Bear with me. See, if you're in the real world and you're totally honest with your doctor, sometimes they lecture you. Like the one who asked me if I was pregnant and I said, "No, I don't think so." "Well, how do you know?" "Uh... well, my period ended yesterday." "That doesn't mean anything." Ok, lady, maybe I don't understand how this works... but see... I thought it did. But at health services they say, "You're not having unprotected sex with 10-15 people at a time most nights per week? Congratulations! That's fantastic! The picture of health!"

Segue to the dental clinic. Last year the dental hygienist asked me if I floss every day. I said, honestly, "well, probably 5 days a week." (which, btw, is probably about as regularly as you're going to get me to do anything I'm supposed to...) They said I was a bad flosser and had to do it every day. This morning, they couldn't stop raving. First, they couldn't even feel my lymph nodes. Awesome! Then my gums were so tight and healthy. Great work! Then they learned I floss 5 days/week. That's really commendable! We talked about my having had braces. Looks good! And who did these fillings? Beautiful work!

I felt a little awkward about it, only because it's a total class thing. Yeah, my teeth are in good shape because we had dental insurance and I went to Dr. Odegaard twice a year for 22 years! And so, I'm sure my mouth is much "cleaner" than most other people who pay $25 for a student to clean their teeth...

Tangentially and kind of weirdly, it made me think of a show like CSI and how when they found my body, before identifying me, they'd know I was some bourgeoisie girl. They take one look at those fillings and those healthy, tight gums and start calling the country clubs.