TEAM LAST CALL

See, I sort of forgot to show up for my last six-month checkup. Actually, I missed about 10 of them in a row. Which is really no big deal, unless you’re into that whole keeping-your-original-teeth thing.

For the past five years, my teeth and I have been a pair of free spirits, cruising down the river of life on a raft called freedom, racing across the deserts of time like Thelma and Louise, treating the world as if it were our own personal playground, like Paris Hilton, but without all the internet sex tapes and Chihuahuas. Well, without the Chihuahuas.

But our holiday came to an abrupt halt when my wife took it upon herself to schedule a dentist appointment for me. It was the worst case of betrayal since that episode of “The OC” where Summer totally breaks up with Seth and then gets together with that creep Zach even though everyone knows that Seth is the one true love of Summer’s life. Or so I’m told.

“There’s no way I’m going to the dentist,” I assured my wife. “I’m sorry to have to do this, but I’m putting my foot down. It’s going down as we speak. I’m the man in this relationship, and I’m telling you right now that I’m simply not going to the dentist. The foot is down now.”

As I pulled into the dentist’s parking lot, I was more nervous than Billy Joel at a sobriety checkpoint. But then I started thinking about how completely overrated the whole going-to-the-dentist thing really is. I mean, all dentists really do is poke around at your teeth for a few minutes and then hand you a free toothbrush. Then they hand you a bill with more zeros on it than a bus full of high school mathletes.

It’s not like anyone’s ever died from not going to the dentist. Really, what’s the worst that can happen?

Apparently, the worst thing that can happen is your teeth will start to decay faster than Britney Spears’ career. And unfortunately, unlike Britney’s career, you can’t fix your teeth by putting on hot pants and flashing your boobies. Not that I didn’t try.

Evidently, I had spent the past five years cultivating the perfect storm of cavities, a magnificent black mass in the back of my mouth just a little smaller than a Ford Explorer. Which explained the throbbing pain I’d been feeling in my molar for the past four months that hurt so bad it just made me want to die.

I was sort of in love with my cavity at first, in the way that kidnap victims can come to sympathize with their captors. The idea that I’d been walking around with this disgusting thing rotting away inside my mouth was kind of hypnotizing. It was like meeting a little brother I never knew I had, except my little brother lived in my mouth and gave me headaches when I ate something cold. I named him Barry.

“It appears,” said the dentist, “that you have a cavity the size of Rhode Island.”

“That’s Barry,” I said.

“Well, I’m afraid Barry’s going to need a root canal.”

“Oh, no!” I squealed. “Is that painful?”

“Well, let’s just say it ranks somewhere between falling down an elevator shaft and giving birth to Michael Moore through your nostril. Can I assume you’ve got dental insurance?”

“No!” I whimpered. “How much are we talking?”

A few smelling salts later and I was back on my feet, scheduling my big root canal appointment with the office manager.

I returned the next week for my date with destiny. I climbed up into the dentist’s chair and immediately launched into a little self-defense mechanism I like to call nervous gas. I blamed it on the dental assistant.

Once things were under control, the dentist began the process of anesthesia by stabbing me repeatedly in the gums with what I could only assume was the harpoon they used to catch Anna Nicole Smith. In between stabs – and this is way too weird for me to make up – the dentist thought it would be a good idea to tell me about a horror movie he once saw called “Dentist 2,” in which a crazed dentist ties a woman down and systematically pulls out all of her teeth. I found this to be exceedingly creepy and inappropriate, but forced out a little laugh anyway since he was the one with the harpoon.

Then the dentist reached under the chair and pulled out a drill so devastatingly massive and incomprehensible it could have run for governor of California. “Ya, I am going to drill your sissy teeth into powda until you are begging for the stopping of the drilling. Hasta la vista, cavity!” said the drill. Although that may have been the anesthesia talking. Either way, I was terrified.

And then something miraculous happened. After several minutes of drilling my teeth like I was the last Alaskan Wildlife Reserve on earth, the dentist set down his drill and looked dejectedly out the window. “Know what?” he sighed. “I don’t think you need a root canal after all.”

“Blubbity blap!” I yelled, my numb lips flapping in the wind. “Blat’s bleat!”

I shot out of the chair and raced out the door before he could change his mind. It was the fastest I’d moved since the day the first New Kids on the Block album was released when I was 13. That’s right, I said it.

Anyway, it was a good day, one that I won’t soon forget. Mostly because my tooth now hurts way worse than before I went to the dentist. I haven’t been able to chew on the right side of my mouth for a month. Let’s just be glad that general practitioners don’t take the same approach to healing, or every time someone complained of a headache they’d get smacked in the face with a shovel. Which is only funny if that person is Clay Aiken.

So, thanks, doc, for “fixing my cavity.”

I hope you enjoy my check, which “totally won’t bounce.”