SO YOUNG!

On the 25fth of March, I went to the Stony Brook Dental Clinic for my daughter Ellen. A regular dentist or one that is irregular can’t see Ellen. However, at the Clinic, students from the dental school get first-hand learning experience, and are expendable, so they are thrown into the pit of working with people that have fear and physically respond by kicking and flaring out!

The dentist, a lovely and articulate woman, was extremely good at it, and so was her assistant. Standing off to the side but observing was this beautiful young woman, who I think was a student. She never said much but did smile at me a lot, so I smiled back!

My observation is that she is too pretty to be a dentist, and probably will be booked solid once she starts a practice.

I know I will be going to her daily, just to get my tooth cleaned, because that is all I will have left in my mouth by the time she becomes a dentist!

Looking about this very long room of cubicles and/or stalls was a whole gaggle of students wanting to become dentists. I’m not sure they are all potty trained yet, but they were young!

I got to think as I sat there, how Dad wanted me to become a dentist. Now that I am retired, I could have been a retired dentist! Perhaps a brain surgeon if I had any, or maybe a retired shyster or even a retired hold-up man.

I guess it is too late for any of us that are retired to feel bad about what could have been!

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been.”