Tapioca Starch

Dr. Tapioca Starch was a bald, tanned, fit dentist.  A runner.  Every six months he competed in a marathon. The rest of the year he trained for the run. "Running relaxes me," he told Rebecca once while poking her left front molar with an ice pick-like dental instrument. He pushed open the doors that separated the clinical space from the waiting space.  He was holding a bucket of water.   "These are my babies." Dr. Starch smiled at Rebecca. " You here to see me?”  he mumbled as he dumped the bucket of water into the top of the giant tropical fish tank.  “No, just the hygienist, thankfully today,” Rebecca offered a relieved smile.  Her usually hilarious dentist turned serious. "Stressful job.  Being a dentist."  Rebecca felt that the dentist might have taken her dental distaste personally. "I know.  Don't y’all have the highest suicide rate?"  "Yes.  As do psychiatrists."  Dr. Starch almost winked at Rebecca as he put the bucket down and began to clean the surface of the tank that didn’t seem to need cleaning.   People have always offered their innermost fears and dreams to Rebecca like a gift. A personal, deep gift she always accepted, maybe needed, even now when she was happily retired. "It's so hard invading people's physical space. You know, I work on their teeth and have to be two inches from a person's lips.  I am literally in their mouth."  Rebecca nodded while tilting her head in agreement.  She remembered when she used to work with a particularly violent little boy with autism.  The fish tank in her office always settled his soul.  "These old people around here are always telling me they have vertigo when I lean them back.  They don't!"  Rebecca, alone with the dentist in the waiting room, chuckled.  “And they move their tongues around alot.”  “Well, you are the dentist for me because you make me laugh.”  And Rebecca meant that because prior to his dental expertise she used to have panic attacks noticing an appointment labeled "teeth with Dr. Amidon" on the calendar. Dr. Amidon, who’s name means powerful and complete although in French amidon de tapioca translates to tapioca starch, smiled with a toothy grin. "Remember that time you filled a tooth without Novocain the first time I came to see you?" I wanted to tell him, no worries about vertigo here. I should have told him that because of him my iPhone doesn't send me a rapid heart beat alarm while I wait for my appointment. I feel confident that with Dr. Tapioca Starch's obsessive running and tropical fish tank, he will be around for a long time to come to tend to my teeth.