My Grade School "House of Pain"

This morning I sat in one of my least favorite chairs, the dentist chair. I had a very nice dental hygienist and  she did a wonderful job of making me comfortable and cleaning my teeth. I always think it's funny when the dentist asks questions when your mouth is clamped open and sharp objects are going in and out of your mouth. Going to the dentist brings back memories of when I was in grade school in New Zealand. Being socialist, every grade school in the country had a free dental clinic to take care of students. I remember that whenever a student was done in the clinic, they'd be sent to a class with a request for the next student. Back in those days it was old school drills, hand-mixing your filling mixture, and no pain medication. As you can tell, I had an experience any grade schooler should never have experienced. One time I had 3 cavities that needed to be filled. The dentist drilled with the old school drills and I had no pain medication. Then I mixed the mixture sitting in my dentist chair, and my cavities were filled. A day later a student entered my class with a dental request, and to my disbelief, my name was called. I sheepishly went to the "house of pain" as it was referred, and climbed into the big chair. The dentist said they'd used wrong measurements the day before and they'd need to take care of it. So began my torture. For some time, which seemed like hours to me, she proceeded to rip out the cavity fillings from the day before, again with no medication. Once out, she kept drilling, I mixed the mixture, and she filled them for the second time in two days. My experience was brutal, but I'm now glad I have a dentist and assistants who are much nicer and always give me pain medication if I ask for it :) Those were two of the toughest days of my life.