Dental Dilemma

Everyone over the age of 40 likely has uttered the sentence “I’m too old for this” many times. At 55, I feel that I’m far too old for any number of things. The problem, however, is that most of those things aren’t going away anytime soon.

Take working for a living. Please! as the late comic Henny Youngman used to say, except that he was saying it about his wife. (Quick aside: As young reporter, I once covered an event that featured Youngman as guest entertainer. Somewhere in our attic there’s a black-and-white photo of the two of us, taken by my newspaper’s photographer. Henny is poised to play his trademark violin, and I seem to remember he’d just made a joke at my expense that had cracked up the furniture-industry executives he’d been paid to amuse.)

Anyway, take working for a living. I’ve been doing it for 33 years now, and I have to say, enough’s enough. That’s a huge chunk of my waking hours spent doing things other than pretty much nothing, which is the way I’d vastly prefer to be spending that time. And holding down a job necessitates many other things for which I feel too old, such as donning business-casual clothes at a pre-dawn hour five days a week, enduring tailgaters on two-lane MacArthur Boulevard because they’re late for work at Sibley Hospital, dealing with coworkers who are even more socially awkward than I am, being forced to adapt to technological changes in the workplace, et cetera and so on.

But there’s one thing for which I’ve long felt too old that I easily could do something about, except that I am a coward. That something is coming clean with my dental team on flossing. Specifically, on the fact that I’ve never flossed my teeth and I have no intention ever of doing so.

When I was a kid, flossing wasn’t even a thing. I went to this awesome dentist in Summit, New Jersey, named Dr Hill who’d been my dad’s dentist forever—since long before he married my mom. Dr Hill was a highly successful and incredibly dapper African American man at a time—this was the 1960s—when kids like me who grew up on suburban cul-de-sacs didn’t see many black men, period, let alone urbane black men who played the horses and sometimes sported a checkered vest and jaunty cap.

Dr Hill never mentioned flossing. He asked me about school and kickball and my life in general, and he displayed that classic dentist’s ability to understand my responses even when my mouth was open and filled with logs of cotton. (Were those part of the cleaning or the drilling process? I can’t remember anymore. In those days when water was unfluoridated and Rice Krinkles were my go-to breakfast cereal, I always had multiple cavities.) I loved Dr Hill.

Our family dentist in Greensboro, North Carolina, where we moved when I was 14, may have mentioned flossing to me, but that was the 1970s, and I had one hand, and the nascent disability empowerment movement hadn’t yet turned its attention to the inalienable right of every American, regardless of hand number, to floss his or her teeth. I don’t know if a device yet existed at that time to facilitate one-handed flossing, but if it did, my dentist didn’t know about it. As I recall, his aged hygienist laboriously flossed my teeth, then looked pityingly at me, as if to say, “Plaque may overtake your mouth and your gums may succumb to disease most foul in the months before you next see me, but there’s not a thing anyone can do about that, you sad, crippled son of a bitch.”

I think it was when I was living in neighboring High Point in the 1980s, working for the newspaper there, that my dentist and/or hygienist began telling me of the existence of a contraption I could hold in my one hand that would allow me to floss my own teeth. I of course had no intention of doing so, because a) it struck me as tedious thing to spend one’s time doing and b) I saw absolutely no evidence that my mouth was going to hell. I mean, the water was fluoridated by then, I was eating better and brushing nightly (whether my teeth needed it or not), and my cavities now were few and far between. Sure, my gums bled during those in-office flossings, but so what? They bled at no other times. Because I never flossed!

My next longtime dentist was Dr Schatz, a wonderful man who already was approximately 112 years old when I became his patient after moving to DC more than 20 years ago. He’d been Lynn’s dentist, and possibly Woodrow Wilson’s as well. His cramped office smelled like 1940, he kept his World War II uniform hung on a doorknob near the desk where Mrs Schatz served as scheduler when she wasn’t serving as hygienist, and he bragged that the Smithsonian had expressed interest in someday buying his dental equipment. Needless to say, the Schatzes didn’t nag me at all about flossing. Oh, they thought it was a good idea, but they knew that Woodrow Wilson hadn’t died of dental disease and that failure to floss wasn’t the end of the world. (Nor, for that matter, had it been the reason the League of Nations hadn’t worked out.)

But then there was this, too. As sweet and kind as the Schatzes were, their views of people with physical challenges weren’t exactly enlightened. I’m not making this up: Mrs Schatz once told Lynn how sad she was for her that I’d never be able to hold her in a two-handed embrace. I believe the Schatzes admired Lynn all the more for her stoicism in the face of such stunted marital intimacy. At any rate, what I’m trying to say is that I’m pretty sure they assumed I was incapable of flossing my own teeth.

Time ultimately waits for no dentist, however, and several years ago Dr Schatz finally retired. (I don’t know if the Smithsonian’s Division of Dental Antiquities ever got a hold of his equipment.) Making the transition to modern dentistry after all those years in the Eisenhower era was a shock to the system in more ways than one. This new office had computer monitors and kept electronic dental records. My new dentist ministered to my teeth from a sitting position—Dr Schatz hadn’t even had a chair. The office atmosphere was antiseptically professional, with no QVC-purchased dancing Santa Clauses on display, no mounds of moldering paperwork piled on the front desk, no ancient volume of Who’s Who in Dentistry sitting in the lobby bookmarked to the practice owner’s page.

I missed those personal touches, and the pure camp of biannual time travel, but I quickly saw the wisdom of entrusting my teeth to a team whose mental and physical faculties weren’t fading, whose professional knowledge was up to date, and whose database made unnecessary my bringing in a filled-out insurance form every time. The thing that bothered me from the get-go, however, was the staff’s insistence on—and assumption of—flossing.

This new hygienist always commented on my bleeding gums and gently urged me to do a better job of flossing, being of a modern mindset that assumed not only that was capable of it, but that I surely must be doing it (if inadequately), because who doesn’t floss in an age when its benefits are so well known?

For the first couple of years, I simply nodded at the sagacity of the hygienist’s advice, content to tacitly lie each time. Eventually, however, this recurrent bit of theater started feeling stale to me. It dawned on me that, hey, “I’m in my 50s and, yes, I'm too old for this!” Why was I engaging in this constant charade? Why was I blandly accepting the container of floss that always accompanied the new toothbrush and mini-tube of toothpaste in my parting “goody bag”?

Why could I not look that earnest hygienist squarely in the eye and simply say, “No disrespect, but I do not floss, and I frankly never will. I know you’re just doing your job and looking out for my optimal dental health, but I feel I’ve aged out of this conversation. I should very much like never to have it again.”

Or, since that would be a lot to verbiage to remember, why couldn’t I at least say, “I hope you won’t take offense, but I don’t floss and don’t plan to. My gums have lasted this long. I’ll take my chances.”

Since making this mental declaration of independence, however, I’ve never been able to make it a verbal, audible one. My most recent checkup and teeth-cleaning was a few weeks ago. I’d been pretty sure this was going to be the time I’d finally make my Flossing Speech. In fact, I’d envisioned a blog post in which I proudly told the story about how I’d kicked flossing tyranny in the ass. (And although I shouldn’t say so, my current hygienist has a substantial one.)

But damn if I just couldn’t do it! Again, as if we’d never had the conversation, she commented on my bleeding gums and urged me to be more diligent about flossing. I so wanted to tell her there can be no diligence where there is no effort or interest in the first place. But those words would not escape my lips. Once again, as I’d done so many times before, I meekly confirmed the wisdom of her advice with a solemn nod that suggested I’d get right on it. I hated myself a little as I climbed into my car.

When I got to the office that morning (it had been an 8 am appointment), I decided I’d seek counsel on the Internet. Surely I’m not the only flossing holdout, I reasoned. I’d do a few minutes of searching and find out how others go about expressing their defiance to their dentist’s offices. (And also, whether there are any consequences. I mean, is it a firing offense? Do some dentists tell noncompliant patients to take their grubby mouths elsewhere? Would I need to shop for a new provider?)

To my great surprise, however, no search combination I entered yielded a single fellow flossing foe. Not “refuse to floss.” Not “won’t floss.” Not “proudly united against flossing.” Nothing! When I Googled the search term “no flossing,” all I found was WebMD’s well-meaning but thoroughly unhelpful guide, “Flossing Teeth: No More Excuses!” Among other things, it hails “floss-holders”—the very device that has been suggested for the one-handed among us.

Where, I wanted to know, was the document titled, “Flossing Teeth: No Excuse for Extending This Ridiculous Charade. Here’s How to Stop the Madness”?

So, I don’t know if refusal to floss is the very last societal protest that lacks an advocacy group, or if I’m the last non-flossing dental patient in these United States, or what. All I know is that I feel entirely too old to continue playing this game, yet I'm too damn much of a wuss to put an end to it.