The Future

So it's true then, that all life's a stage, and irony always comes round to bite your ass. Have made up my mind to pursue higher studies. On children. Yes.

2 years ago I emerged bruised and battered from the jaws of death that was dental school, and vowed never to study again. 2 years ago I stood at the threshold of a ridiculous gypsy van on my first day of work, and reassured myself that such humiliation would eventually come to pass.

When I beheld the first demonic, candy-rotten, sundae-spoilt, kicking and screaming 4 year-old Satan-spawn on my chair, I reminded myself to tahan for just one year, after which I will leave this farce behind and get down to the real business of adult dentistry.

2 years on, I finally realise that I hate adult dentistry, and that I'm better - I dare say, even happier - with a screaming kid in my chair. I was never technically inclined: after awhile, a filling is a filling, a crown is a crown. I take no pleasure from being an automation. But a child is an entirely different bag of beans.

You don't have to love them; in fact, that works to your disadvantage. You just have to be able to understand them very objectively - to possess the acuity, imagination and intuition to read the motives behind not only the tot, but the fretting parent clasping her hand.

You have to interpret and handle accordingly a mother's hawkish, interfering protectiveness over her molly-cuddled, petulant son. Or a father's stooped, powerless resignation over his threshing, bawling daughter. After each successful, tolerable treatment, the child smiles, gains confidence and starts talking and being playful; the parent looks at you with adoring gratitude. A relationship is formed.

And if all else fails, you can drag him to the operating theatre, gas him and pluck out all his teeth when he's asleep. That works the same for the child too. Wonderful. So, here's to a lifetime of paediatric dentistry, if I one day manage to realise my ironic dream.