Shooting little puppies with a bb gun

As you probably guessed from the title of this post, I went to the dentist today. I am still incapable of going to the dentist without getting that song from Little Shop of Horrors the movie with I think Steve Martin playing the sado-dentist. My new dentist who I met for the first time today is, happily, the exact opposite of that except for that she is also a dentist.

I was very excited on this visit to receive a gold star from her - healthy teeth and gums, no cavities, no furrowed brow re: the merits of regular flossing. Is it weird that we get, nay - we expect - an evaluation from our dentists? Like getting graded, "How'd I do?" is always part of the dentist visit routine. Somehow with doctors it's different. They may have suggestions or recommendations, but we don't regularly get an explicit grade from our doctors*.

I think the other reason that that song was going through my head is Sunday afternoon in Nashville as Eric and his family and I were hanging out in the living room watching hockey, a rascally squirrel kept getting into the birdfeeder and finally Eric's dad got a bb gun from the garage and shot around the squirrel to encourage it to go eat the neighbor's birdseed instead. I mostly wasn't horrified.


*Hmm. I might inadvertently be revealing here that I haven't seen a doctor for a "check-up" in several years, possibly longer. It occurs to me that doctors probably do do this, just not when you only go to them for acute things like a hip x-ray or strep throat.