It Is April Fools, but This Is No Prank.

my first standup, in written form

courtesy iStock

On November 7, 2020, I had an idea for a personal essay, but as I wrote it out, I realized it was something else.  It was, strangely enough, a standup routine.

Some of you may have heard of a “tight five” – that’s what a nascent standup comic attempts to create, a five-minute act that’s lean, mean, and of course, funny.  After coming to the final sentence of this piece, it felt like this might qualify as a tight five – and then I had a moment of great enthusiasm: Once the pandemic is over, I’m going to find an open mic and deliver this hilarious sermon!  I was so excited that for the next few months, I came up with a few more routines.

I don’t know if you can call this pandemic exactly over, but it certainly has taken a back seat in the news cycle, so let’s just say it’s over enough.  And yet I find myself wanting to be nowhere near any type of a microphone, because I’m too cowardly to be a standup comic.  I’m a writer, and it’s best that I stay in my literary lane.

So for the next six months, starting on this very apt April Fools’ Day, instead of standing up, I’ll sit down and post one routine per month.  They’ll start off fairly innocuous, but by the last two, they will be fairly…nocuous?  Apparently that is a word.

This is not the first piece I came up with (that’ll be #5, one of the racier ones), but I think it’s the best intro to my “act.” Now, without further ado, my first routine. Imagine what you are about to read in my voice, as I stand in front of a microphone in front of a non-heckling crowd. Light clinking of glasses and utensils, some low-level chatter, and a smattering of laughs…

The Best Dental Hygienist

Twenty-five minutes is not a very long time to tell your life story, but if you were to start talking from the first second and not stop until the last second, then actually, twenty-five minutes is quite the sufficient time.

This would be my revelation this morning, when I drove to my dentist for a dental cleaning.  The dentist I go to now must be operating a puppy mill of dental hygienists, because in the three years I’ve been there, I have never had the same person twice.  At the previous practice, I was assigned the same awesome woman, Mary Ellen.  I liked and feared her at the same time, because I knew she did a great job but that it would also hurt a bit, because she conducted such a thorough cleaning.

The hygienist today, I never stored her name in my memory banks.  She told it to me, I’m sure, as she extended her hand for a handshake.  It was a small hand, kind of delicate looking, the fine fingers of a pianist.  As soon as she sat me down, she began.  Not with the cleaning, but with the talking.

While she clipped the drool bib around my neck and stuck that thing that sucks up your saliva in the corner of my mouth, she told me she was in need of a house, as she left Maine last year and has been looking for a permanent home for the last five months.  She was originally from the Jersey shore, in Ocean County.  Her brother and his wife owned eight cats on three floors of his house, and they also fed another dozen in the yard.  He had created a contraption outside that would activate a large heating pad from pressure, keeping the feral felines toasty warm while also being mindful of energy use.

Now I don’t know what kind of a conversation you have had with your hygienist, but I’ve always found it to be a one-sided affair, with them saying things and you uttering an animalistic grunt.  Like if they said I just got married, you’d be like [ridiculously happy, high pitched moan].  Or if they said I just had to put my dog down, you’d be like [ridiculously low pitched moan].  They’re all moans of varying degrees.  They talk, and we moan.

But not this one.  She was the first hygienist I’ve ever had who removed that saliva sucker from my mouth, not because I asked but because she wanted to hear my actual, non-guttural response.

Now that I’ve had time to think it over, maybe I have this all wrong.  She’s actually the best dental hygienist, because she actually cares enough to want to know what I really think about things.  It’s all the others who are thoughtless monsters.