Mobile Dentistry?

I’m happy(?) to report that my family dental office has apparently merged with a major international airline.

I got an automated email this morning from West Village Family Dentistry, reminding me that I needed to schedule my next cleaning appointment. That was expected. What was not expected was the Lufthansa logo next to their name, or the Lufthansa logo prominently displayed in the main header area at the top of the email, with “Lufthansa” written next to it.

So, apparently, my small family dentist office in Rocklin, California has merged with Germany’s flagship carrier, the fourth largest airline in the world. This is an interesting development. I wonder who bought whom?

The email simply read:

Regular dental visits are crucial to maintaining a healthy smile and our records show that you are past due for a cleaning and exam. Request an appointment above and let us know what times work for a visit.

Hope to see you soon!

- Your Friends at West Village Family Dentistry

Oddly, there was no mention of the merger, or how it would affect my dental care options. There was also no mention of why Lufthansa’s impressive computer scheduling system didn’t know that I already have an appointment scheduled in April. Maybe all the Rocklin appointments got wiped out if there was already a flight scheduled at the same time when they integrated the two systems? That’s probably what happened.

Also conspicuously missing from the communication was any mention of the obvious changes I will encounter at my next visit. For instance, am I now required to arrive at my dental office two hours before my cleaning?

How does security work now? Do I need to bring a passport or a REAL ID to check in at the counter after May 7, 2025?

If they do the arms-over-your-head full body scan, will that double as my x-rays? Is that covered by insurance, or is that free?

If I have TSA PreCheck, do I need to wait in the waiting room with the commoners, or can I go directly to my dental chair?

If I purchased a Business Class cleaning, how will that differ from a First Class or Coach cleaning?

Will the dental chairs be replaced by more Lufthansa-ish seats? If so, will the little button on the arm rest recline my seat enough from its upright and locked position to allow them to work on my teeth?

Will getting into the new dental chairs now be called “boarding?”

Will a hygienist come by with a skinny cart and offer me complimentary water, soft drinks, and coffee? Will beer and wine be available for purchase? Will the drinks be delivered by my hygienist through the little sprayer nozzle?

How do the complimentary snacks work now? The little bags of pretzels and snack mix seem like they might work against the main goal of the appointment.

Will the new dental chairs now have seat belts and flotation devices built into the seat cushions?

How do the oxygen masks work in the event of a loss of office pressure during my visit? Will oxygen just be delivered via one of those hospital nose-hoses instead of a yellow mask and bag so they can keep working in my mouth? Also, the office ceilings are pretty high. Will the nose-hose be long enough, and do I still need to pull down to start the flow of oxygen?

As you can tell, at this point I’ve got more questions than answers about this merger.

I’m currently on hold with Lufthansa customer service to try to get some clarity.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2025 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

You Said a Mouthful

Son Number Three just got initiated into the world of orthodontics in a big way. It was sort of like getting initiated into a college fraternity, minus the alcohol. There was still a lot of throwing up slurred speech.

His older brothers were already members of the Brotherhood of Rubberband And ChromE Smiles, or BRACES, for short. Son Number One has the full meal deal (literally - he can store a full meal in his top and bottom braces). Number Two has the training wheels version with just a retaining wire mounted to his back molars, keeping a rogue tooth in place until it’s time for the full steel grill. Let’s just say both of them are severely dental floss-impaired. Watching them try to thread floss through their braces is like watching a senile ninety-year-old woman still trying to do cross stitch.

So, I thought I was a veteran at the orthodontist’s office when we took Son Number Three in for his annual visit. Then they informed us he would need an expander.

A what now?

Apparently his upper jaw is too narrow to fit all his adult teeth that are on the way down, so they need to widen it. In order to widen a jaw, they install a device into the roof of the mouth that steadily pushes the teeth apart, and the body will magically grow more jaw bone.

I immediately envisioned him looking like a small blonde version of Jay Leno, but when I voiced my concerns they assured me he would remain looking like himself.

OK, I guess.

Oh, and also, he’s pushing his front teeth outward with his tongue every time he swallows. We’ll fix that by putting a fence on the expander.

Whatever you say.

His next appointment was set to get an impression of his teeth. I had seen this procedure done on Son Number Two. They fill a tray with purple goop and you bite down on it and hold it in your mouth for a while and when they remove it, somehow the purple goop has turned white and is now a perfect impression of your teeth. Witchcraft!

No problem, I figured, as they put Number Three in the chair. This was easy last time. Then they strapped the standard dental drool apron around his neck with an added twist – a plastic bag attached to the clips also, so it looked like he had a clear plastic feed bag.

I wonder what that bag is for, I thought. It’s probably just a handy little trash bag for all their swabs and cotton spacers and whatnot.

As the dad of three boys, I have cleaned every bodily fluid they possess off their clothing at one point or another, many times in a gas station sink on a road trip. But it had obviously been a while, because it wasn’t until Number Three gagged on the first tray of purple goop that I realized what the bag was really for.

They were expecting him to throw up. Which he did. A lot.  

He handled it like a trooper, and the good news? When you throw up at our orthodontist’s office you get a free T-shirt and a Capri Sun!

Back in the chair a few weeks later and it was time to install the device. Hmm… You’re really going to fit all that stuff into his mouth? OK…

Ten minutes later and they were all done. He opened his mouth for me to see and it looked like he had two beer pop tabs stuck to the back of his front teeth.

Yes, that’s the fence to keep his tongue from pushing on those teeth.

Back behind that, attached to his upper teeth in four places, he had what looked like a silver Matchbox Car-sized Transformer robot at the roof of his mouth, doing the ninja hands-and-feet-pressing-against-the-walls-hiding-on-the-ceiling thing.

That’s the expander.

Um, how is he supposed to eat with all this stuff in his mouth? Or swallow? Or breathe?

Yes, some food will get suck up under there from time to time. It’s best to dislodge it using water.

I’m not sure we can fit any water into his mouth right now… OK, buddy. You ready to go?

“I canff geeff ma frommen.”

Yeah, he’s going to be a little lisp-y for a while. The more talking and reading out loud he does, the better it will get.

A little lisp-y? That sounded like he was speaking Spanish with a whole potato in his mouff. I’m not even sure where he’s keeping his tongue. There’s no room for it anymore.

See you in a month.

Can’t wait. OK, buddy, let’s roll. You hungry?

“Freff a butter splimm.”

You bet. Let’s go get you a piece of paper and a pencil.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Gentle Hygiene

This generation of kids is soft. They won’t ever know real pain and real fear like we did as kids. Or, at least, as I did as a kid. I’m not sure what your dental office visits were like, but as for me, well, let’s just say Clint Eastwood and I had the same dentist.

When I tell my kids that we’re going to the dentist for their six-month cleanings, they cheer. They actually want to go. What’s up with that? My mom had to start searching for me three hours before the appointment time, because I had paid my friends to hide me. Our neighborhood had an underground railroad system for kids with impending dental visits.

My kids get SpongeBob SquarePants on a 27-inch flat screen mounted directly over their chair. I had bad ‘70s and ‘80s elevator music that would be drowned out by the sound resonating inside my skull of pointy metal implements being scraped across my molars.

My kids get fluoride that tastes like bubble gum or birthday cake. My fluoride was raw fluoride, freshly mined from the earth, or wherever the hell fluoride comes from. It was probably siphoned from a 55-gallon drum out on the loading dock and applied directly to your teeth, and it damn-sure didn’t taste like birthday cake. It tasted like what a mixture of used antifreeze and charcoal lighter fluid probably tastes like, and you could only spit afterward. If you drank any water to wash the (most likely radioactive) substance out of your mouth, the whole process would be for nothing, and your teeth would surely fall out of your mouth the next day.

My kids get to pick a toy from the toy box after their little dental chair vacation, happily browsing through Frisbees and Matchbox cars while they enjoy the lingering taste of bubble gum.  We were handed a new toothbrush in a lobby that smelled like raw fluoride and fear.

When I say that I had the same dentist as Clint Eastwood, I’m not joking. Dr. Kincade and Clint were college roommates, and remained good friends. Clint would fly into our town for his dental visits. I never saw him in the office, but Dr. Kincade showed me his X-rays once. I think it goes without saying that Clint Eastwood has very manly-looking teeth.

I was a Clint Eastwood fan, so it was kind of cool to have the same dentist, but looking back on it, I’m not sure it was really optimum. Clint is obviously a total badass, and so you have to assume that a college roommate he would remain lifelong friends with would be kind of a tough guy, too. I didn’t think about it at the time, but do you really want your dentist to be a Clint Eastwood-style badass? No, you don’t.

I had a lot of cavities as a kid, despite the fact that my mom did not allow sugar within a hundred yards of our house. I was just born with cavity-loving teeth. (My wife’s teeth, on the other hand, are bulletproof. She doesn’t understand why I don’t like the dentist. I pray that our boys got her teeth.)

Being the rough-and-tumble dentist that he was, Dr. Kincade used to drill and fill my cavities without Novocain. My earliest memories of the dental chair are an awful acoustical version of some Carly Simon song being drowned out by a combination of the high-pitched whine of the drill and the searing pain in my jaw, as the smell of burning tooth enamel filled my nostrils. Can’t wait to get my free toothbrush after this!

I didn’t even know Novocain existed until one of my friends told me about it as he was working to keep me hidden before an office visit one day. When I asked Dr. Kincade if I could have some, he said, “Do you have a brother? I always thought you were the one who didn’t need it.” I guess I looked tougher than I really was. It’s still a toss-up as to which hurt worse, though – the Novocain shot or the drilling without it. Clint’s dentist had big needles.

Son Number One just had his first cavity, and he was in the chair watching SpongeBob last night getting it fixed. He was nervous beforehand, and I tried my best to reassure him that it would all be fine, but I think he could hear the uncertainty in my voice. Or maybe I told him about my cavities as a kid. Either way, he was nervous.

The first thing he got was a delicious swab of numbing gel that tasted just like cherry soda. Yummy. Then he braced himself for the Novocain shot that he actually never even felt. He happily watched SpongeBob’s hijinks down at the Krusty Krab as his cavity was drilled and filled in less than ten minutes.

“What was I nervous about, Dad? I didn’t even know he gave me the shot, and I never felt a thing.”

“I told you it would be fine.”

“I know. I don’t know why I didn’t believe you.”

“Probably because I didn’t believe me,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?”

“Nothing, buddy. I’m glad it didn’t hurt. You did great”

“SpongeBob is funny. Can we get ice cream like you promised?”

“Clint and I never got SpongeBob.”

“What?”

“Nothing, buddy. Let’s go get some ice cream.”

I’m telling you. This generation is soft.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!