Why would you believe that he could have, though?

Everyone knows that everyone's terrified of dentists, or at least pretends to be. I hadn't minded too much when people tried to make themselves look heroic, or garner sympaty, through stories of anguish - until recently, that is, when I discovered that I need to have some treatment done myself, and all their scare stories came flooding back.

Suddenly those people who'd basked in the reflected horror of these tales of wailing and gnashing (or otherwise) of teeth seemed not only cowardly, but also downright nasty: they weren't offering a reasoned critique of their own surgeons, but aiming to bolster the popular image of universal monstrosity.

It reminded me of nothing so much as the stories we had passed down to us at primary school, in which secondary school was painted as a vast dark place, where older boys (mostly) would pounce unprovoked on a new pupil, then pull them to one side and rough them up a bit, before give them an unwelcome baptism in a flushing cubicle. Of course, nothing of the sort ever happened to anyone that anyone had actually really known, if you pushed them on the matter, but people still persisted in scaring the junior schoolers.

So now, contemplating my own extraction, I tell myself that the scare stories are exactly that, and try not to worry too much. I remember just how pleasant and human my current dentist actually is, and the way that I frequently come out feeling positively calm. I remind myself that the only bad thing that's ever happened is my fear of what might happen if I should slip inexplicably into one of the stories that people keep feeding into the collective consciousness.

Imagine what it would be like if we didn't keep ourselves so afraid of going to the dentist: nobody would worry unnecessarily, nights would be less sleepless, and a huge amount of tension would simply evaporate. People might remind themselves how great it is that our teeth can be so fantastically well looked after compared to only a generation or two ago, and come away from the dentist appreciating how clean and well-fixed their teeth actually are.

Of course, there will always be people who have a bad experience, and the dentist is only ever going to be as exciting as having your teeth serviced. But the next time you have an unpleasant experience, especially if it's more through fear than fact, do me (and everyone else) a favour and don't go round scaring people with it. Or I'll flush your head down the loo.