August - September 2001 Edition

My Vacation at the Dentist   By Lloyd P. Dorfman (Fairclough Place resident) My wife and I have been crying for some time about getting away, just the two of us.  We haven’t been away alone since our honeymoon in 1995.  Two kids, four apartments, one house and a host of  sidebars later I now feel like I cheated her out of “HER” vacation. I am nervous, anxious and completely scared out of my 42 year old wits at the prospect of having a tooth pulled.  No amount of assurances could put me at ease over the “EXTRACTION” I was facing at 9:00 AM this particular Monday.  After all, I have never had a tooth pulled before.  This tooth, which has been the source of dental  trauma for me since I was about six years old was about to face the ultimate sacrifice.  On top of it all, I was going to have it removed by a dentist in Fair Lawn who I don’t even know.  I’m new in town…  Could he be as knowledgeable about this tooth more so than my old dentist who raised this tooth since it was just a newborn? How could he understand the time, pain and artistry that went into this tooth?  How could he possibly be intimate with this tooth?  I am more upset over this procedure than I was when I turned 40 years old. Dead man driving, I pull into the parking lot of The Metropolitan Group and the office of  Howard J. Ritt D.M.D.  For a brief moment I thought I had pulled into the Tri Boro Auto Body place next door where I had only days before went for an estimate on the ‘ol SUV.  You know the look?   Cinder block façade in need of repair, gravel driveway and institutional looking windows.  This was the place however and just “not as nice as my old CENTRAL PARK WEST dentist”, I thought snobbily to myself. Inside is tastefully decorated in 1970’s dental.  Brown paneling adorning the walls, a picture of a really big tooth with clever words of wisdom regarding tooth decay, ripped and stained chairs and a TIME magazine with Jimi Hendrix on the cover.  Not that I got to read it or anything because I WAS FIRST IN LINE!  9:00 AM and time had run out for me and my molar. In the chair and after some brief exchanges of pleasantries between us, the needle was in and  the “MASK” was on.  Like every recipe your aunt ever gave you, there’s always that “secret ingredient” that actually made the dish pretty good, which in the case of an “EXTRACTION” would  be the gas.  After the countdown I was tangerine trees and marmalade skies…Led Zeppelin playing on the MUZAK ever so slightly above  the sound of suction.  Every minute or two I would try to act like I was normal by looking at the dentist’s instruments or something.   Dr. Ritt was working away with one of those 50 piece ratchet sets you can order on TV late at night.  I think he ordered it Friday and paid the extra rush charge to have it delivered first thing Monday morning.   He cradled my head in his left arm like a halfback protects a football and was charging toward the end zone in my mouth with determination.  I started to lose it thinking this was like a Three Stooges thing I saw one time when I realized THIS IS IT!  He’s gonna pull my tooth! , then another  Led Zep tune came on.  It reminded me of high school and a million other things like vacations and people I hadn’t thought about in a very long time.  In only seconds I thought about every place I had ever been and wanted to go.  St Thomas, Jamaica, London.  Maybe visit Israel or China.  There were just so many places that young people should visit while they can still fully enjoy it.   Beth and I are still young.  We really should get away together. “Should I clean it up for you ?” Dr Ritt asked.   “What’s that?” I said .  “Well, it broke up in a couple of pieces but I have the two roots”  I was still performing for the last word of “Stairway To Heaven”  when I realized my tooth was already being prepared for display at home.    Pretty cool…. Not only did I never feel a thing but I had traveled through a time/space continuum that somehow allowed me to visit a lot of great vacation spots and wiped out 42 years of dental paranoia.  (Dr. Howard J. Ritt is at 5-05 Saddle River Road, 201-796-7500.  No frills, but a great dentist!)