Whitening

I was not warned.  Nobody tells you how hilarious and weird getting your teeth whitened is going to be.

Let me back up.  I have only ever written one negative review on Yelp.  It was for my dental office, and it said: "This is a very unprofessional business.  I made a dentist appointment over the phone and when I showed up for it, I was told that it was never put on the schedule.  They refused to see me and told me the next available appointment wasn't for another two months." 

In response, I received a message from the president of the dental clinic offering me a free teeth whitening to make up for my "negative experience."   I didn't realize how powerful Yelp is, and I felt kind of mortified that I was complaining to the point that the president of some organization had to contact me.  Suddenly, I felt like I was one of those people who sends food back in a restaurant because there were pecans on the salad instead of walnuts.  Or the type who says things like "I want to talk to your manager."  A part of me wanted to delete the Yelp review and pretend none of it had ever happened.  But who could refuse a free teeth whitening?

I'm pretty sure I was being paranoid, but when I got to the office, I felt like everyone there hated me.  What do they know?  What were they told?  Did someone say: "This girl is coming in because she's a big complainer and we have to deal with her so she'll take down that nasty Yelp review"?  I felt very self-conscious.  My goal was to be polite, quiet, and not attract too much notice.  I was going to get in and out of there as quickly as possible, delete my Yelp review, and move on.

First, I had to sign this document that made absolutely no sense.  I read it three times and each time I did, I felt more confused rather than less.  I think the same guys who wrote the movie Idiocracy also wrote this consent form as a prank.  For one thing, why does it take the time to label me as a "Releasor," but have me sign the form as a "Client"?  And what do my heirs have anything to do with it?

Next, I was taken to a room where a nice, pretty, and quiet girl who I assume was my dental hygienist... suddenly came at me with cartoonish mouth stretchers!  I was instantly transformed into a claymation character.  It is impossible not to laugh when your mouth is forced into a gigantic smile.  The girl continued subjecting me to bizarre sensations by spraying my teeeth with cold jets of air and then carefully painting cool (what I had imagined was colorless) gel onto my gum lines.  After ten minutes of this treatment, I was desperate to see what I looked like.  After all, I had to know whether I looked more like Wallace or Gromit.

The moment I saw myself in my iPhone, I lost it.  It was even more shocking than I had envisioned.  The bright blue was just too much.  It didn't help that my laugh sounded very strange through closed teeth.

My hygienist smiled politely, and I could not tell if she was more surprised or uncomfortable by my uncontrolled laughter.  She gently took the clamps out of my mouth and replaced them with a tray of whitening gel.  She shined a light onto me, so that I looked like some weird sci-fi robot with laser-mouth powers.


I was left alone like that for the majority of the next 30 minutes.  I continued laughing to myself throughout the duration of that time.  I was supposed to keep my mouth closed and stay very still.  As a result, all of my hysterical energy transformed into vibrating my body and crying.  Tears ran down my eyes and into my ears.

The dental hygienist checked on me about 3 times.  I'm pretty sure every time she came in, I was in the exact same predicament: silently shaking, laughing, and crying all by myself.  It was pretty embarrassing.

So much for getting in and out of there unnoticed.