Unlike most people, I never had a fear of the dentist. What was there to be scared of? A slightly eccentric guy in blue looks inside your mouth, tells you t brush your teeth more thoroughly, tells you eat less sweets and then -and this is one of life's great ironies- gives you a lollipop. I know this is a paranoid time and letting a child come within three miles of a man with a lollipop is punishable by eternal damnation, but really, I never considered anything about the experience remotely threatening...except maybe the ominous warnings about my teeth turning black and becoming self aware but the lollipop was usually enough to distract me from such thoughts.

I began to look forward to that day which came once every six months (just as the government says) and I got to sit in a cool chair from the future and eat lollipops and one day I was allowed to watch the dentist's sons TV...that was my first experience with Cartoon Network.

So, the years went by and soon enough. The lollipops and the stickers stopped being offered to me and the chair was just a chair and the visits every six months were just another ripple in the wide, cold dark ocean that is my adolescent life. Then I learnt I had to have braces.

Due the propaganda of a certain filmmaker; John Lasseter, kids with braces had a pretty bad rep at that point in time, I remember my sister almost weeping for the freedom of my pearly yellows and my friend James looking me in the eye with dread dripping from syllable he spoke and lightning crashing behind him as he said:
"Alex, when you get braces...Do NOT eat carrots"

And so that was my fate sealed...braces; that's actually not so bad. They don't really hurt, they come in customisable colours and I'm always up for disproving Americans. It's what came before that sent a shiver down my incisors. You see...the job of a set of braces is to move your teeth around and eventually straighten them out into something that resembles more of a line of soldiers and less of an angry mob.

Now, you can't yank out someone's teeth just like that. That's cruel and inhumane. It is, however perfectly acceptable to ram a needle up into someone's gums. I've never been scared of needles either. Blood tests, boosters, heaf tests. I take it all with a ‘Bring it on', ‘Devil may care', ‘Give me my damn lollipop' attitude. But let me tell you, when someone sticks a needle in your gum it bloody hurts. It's not a place in the body where needles should be stuck. Arm's are fine, they're squishy, it's straight in, straight out. But you gums are tough...They have to really force it in, I remember feeling like no-one else in the world could be in more pain than me at that moment. While my mouth was numb my dad turned to the dentist and asked if he'd heard the news. Two planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre and it was collapsing as e sat there. Which kind of ruined that for me...

It's been about five years since I got my braces fixed. They're off now but I still go down the orthodontists every few months so he can ask me if a remembered to bring my retainer this time. I get a wonderful view of his nose hair as I sit on that chair, it makes me wonder if electrolysis have bad teeth...

A lot's changed since my first visit to the dentist...We now have our own Cartoon Network. Not only this, we now have four televisions, a dishwasher, three DVD players, two computers with built in DVD players and a strange silver gurgling in the corner of our kitchen which I've yet to discover the use of (apparently it makes coffee, but I suspect there's a DVD drive somewhere on it), we've even built an extension...Probably using DVD players for bricks.

But no matter how many DVD's I watch I will always remember the dentists...With the plastic castle that children could use to distract themselves from the inevitable demise of there teeth, to the hygienist who wields her dental floss as if she's going to strangle someone. Then there's the dentist, strong, proud, working endlessly and tirelessly to make England a whiter place.
I wish I could remember his name...