In the best of Humour

Otago Witness, Issue 3996, 14 October 1930, Page 75

In the best of Humour

( Copybight.—Fob the Otago Witness. )

THE PERFECT OPTIMIST. <

By

STEPHEN LEACOCK.

Well, here we are again, seated in the big red plush chair, in for one of our jolly little mornings with our dentist. My! It certainly is cosy to settle back into this comfortable chair with a whole quiet morning in front of us—no work to do, no business'to think of, just to lie in one of our comfortable day-dreams.

How pleasant it is in this chair anyway, with the bright sunshine streaming in through the window upon us and illuminating every corner of the neat and immaculate little room in which we sit. For immaculate neatness and cleanliness, I repeat, give me a little up-to-date dental room every time. Talk of your cosy libraries or your dens, they won’t compare with this little nook. Here we are, with everything we need around us, all within easy reach. Here on this revolving tray are our pleasant little nippers and forceps, some so small and cute and others so big and strong that we feel a real confidence in them. They’d never let go of anything! Here is our dainty little electric buzzer with our revolving gimlets at the end; our little hammer on the left; our brad-awl on the right—every tiring!

For the moment our dental friend- is out of the room—telephoning, we imagine. The merry fellow is so popular with all his friends that they seem to ring him up every few minutes. Little scraps of his 'conversation reach our

ears as we lie half-buried in our white towel, in a sweet reverie of expectancy. “ Pretty bad in the night was it, eh ? Well, perhaps you’d better come along down and we’ll make a boring through that bicuspid and see what’s there! ”

Full of ideas, he is, always like that —never discouraged, something new to suggest all the time. And then we hear

him say—“ Well, let me see. I’m busy now for about a couple of hours ” Hurrah! That means us! We were so afraid he was going to say, “ I’ll be through here in about five minutes.” But no, it’s all right; we’ve got two long dreamy hours in front of us. He comes back into the room and his cheery presence, as he searches among his instruments and gives a preliminary buzz to the buzzer, seems to make the spring sunshine even brighter. How pleasant life seems—the dear old life; that is, the life we quitted 10 minutes ago and to which, please Providence, we hope to return in two hours. We never felt till we sat here how full and pleasant life is* Think of it, the simple joy of being alive. That’s all we ask—of going to work each day (without a toothache) and coming home each night to eat our dinner. If only people realised it—just to live in our world without a toothache. . . .

So runs our pleasant reverie. But, meanwhile, our dental friend has taken

up a little hammer and has tapped us, in his playful way, on the back teeth.

“Feel that?” he asks. And he’s right, the merry dog! We do feel it. He guessed it right away. We are hoping so much that he will hit us again. Come on, let’s have a little more fun like that. But no. He’s laid aside his hammer and as nearly as we can see has rolled up his cuffs to the elbow and has started his good old electric buzzer into a roar. Ah, ha! Now we are going to get something—this is going to be the big fun, the real thing. .This’s the greatest thing about our little" dental mornings, there’s always something new. Always as we sit we have a pleasant expectancy that our dental friend is planning a new one. Now, then, let us sit back tight, while he drives at our jaw with the buzzer. Of all the exhilarating feelings of hand--to-hand conflict, of man against man, of mind matched against mind, and intelligence pitted against intelligence, I know of none more stimulating than when we brace ourselves for this conflict of man and machinery. He has on his side the power of electricity and the force of machinery. But we are not without resource. We brace ourselves, laughingly, in our chair while he starts to bore. We need, in fact, our full strength; but on the other hand, ■ if he tries to keep up at this pace his hands will get tired. We realise, with a sense., of amusement, that if his machine slips, he may get a nasty thump on the hand against our jaw-bone. He slacks off for-just a second —half withdraws his machine and says: “Were you at the hockey game last night ? ” and then starts his instrument again at full roar. “ Were we at the hockey game last night?” How strange it sounds! Why, yes, of course, we were! In that faraway long-ago world, where they play hockey and where there is no toothache —we were there only last night. Yes, we remember, it was just towards the end of that game that we felt those twinges in one of the—what does he call it, the lower molars? Anyway, one of those twinges which start the exultant idea racing through our minds •.“Tomorrow we’ll have to go to the dentist.”

A female voice speaking into the room has called him to the telephone, and again we are alone. What if he never comes back! The awful thought leaps to our minds, what if he comes in and says, “ I’m sorry to say I have to take a train out of town at once.” How terrible! Perhaps he’ll come in and say: “ Excuse me, I have to leave instantly for England! ” or “I ll have to let your work go, they’ve sent for me to go to China! ” '

But no, how lucky! Back he comes again. We’ve not lost him. And now what is he at! Stuffing cotton-wool up into our head, wool saturated with some kind of drugs and pounding it in with a little hammer. And then—all of a sudden, so it seems—he steps back and says: “ There, that will do nicely till Monday! ” And we rise, half-dazed, from our chair to realise in our disappointment that it is over already. Somehow we had thought that our pleasant drowsy morning of pounding and boring and dreaming in the sunlight, while our dental friend mixed up something new, would last for ever. And now, all of a sudden, it is over. Never mind! After all, he said Monday ! It won’t seem so long till then! And meantime we can think about it all day and look forward to it and imagine how it is going to feel. Oh! It won’t be long. And so we step out into the spring sunshine of the street —full of cottonwool and drugs and electricity and reverie—like a person returning to a forgotten world and dazed to find it there.