About halfway through my last dentist’s appointment, I started feeling like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. 

Only taller.  And without a nose so big I could smoke a cigarette in a hurricane without it going out.  Plus I’m generally better looking, and although that sounds like bragging, it’s not, not really. I mean: everybody’s better looking than Dustin Hoffman, except for a few people who’ve been in serious industrial accidents involving acid of aircraft propellers.

Even people who live in Afghanistan edge Dustin out in the Attractiveness Olympics, and it’s no easy feat for them.  They’ve suffered decades of was, grinding poverty, religious police, women wearing barbecue tarps and, to top it off, when you shave the guys and get most of the dirt off the guys, it turns out that Dustin Hoffman is almost better looking than they are.  And when you look under the barbecue tarps, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie turns out to be almost better looking than their wives.  That’s just got to be depressing.

Not the fault of the Afghan ladies, though.  Face it, you spend your life in a war zone under a barbecue tarp because your society is being run by psychos who think the sight of your face is enough to destroy society by inciting terrible lust, and you’re liable to let your looks go a bit.

No wonder the men spent all their time blowing up statues of importance to other religions, running bottles of whiskey over with tanks and waging war.  Anything to keep them away from a mirror and the wife, right?

“Ahmed, you wanna look under the tarp tonight?”

“Um, love to honey, but I…um…gotta wage war against America.  That’s it!  Gotta take out the great Satan.  Sorry.”

Forget regular foreign aid.  You want Afghanistan to quit being an international pain in everybody’s butt?  Send in the Mary Kay Kommandos.  Get some lip gloss and some eye shadow in there for crying out loud.  A million gallons of scope.  A battalion of dentists wouldn’t hurt, either.  Some bikini waxing parlours, teach ‘em how to pluck away unwanted eyebrow hair.  Then get every woman in the country a membership at the Spa Lady Gymnasium, and, after about a year, you gradually reintroduce the garter belt, thong underwear and the six-inch stiletto heeled follow-me-home-and –befriend-me-pump.  Then, and only then, their men folk will start staying home instead of trying to ferment religious wars and sundry other mischief around the globe.

Trust me.  It’s why America doesn’t conquer the world.  And they could.  They wanted to take over Canada, how long would the Canadian (un) Armed Forces last against them?  Couple hours, max?  It’d be like Mike Tyson vs. Don Knotts or Rosanne Barr vs. Calista Flockhart.  (Come to think of it, any of those match-ups wouldn’t last long, but wouldn’t it be fun to watch?  Or, even better, Mike Tyson vs. Calista.  Whatever they charged, the pay-per-view for that would be worth it.)

Armed to the teeth, replete with soldiers and treasure, America is the world’s last super power and yet Americans just sit around minding their own business until some idiot messes with them.

You want to know why?  Cause they’ve got hot chicks who put in serious gymnasium time and are willing to wax away that unwanted hair, that’s why.  American men are too busy to wage unnecessary wars.  They’re busy working out so they can look good to the hot chicks, or working hard to make money because a lot of hot chicks will overlook a bulging belly if there’s a bulging wallet somewhere within reach.

And even if you’re an ugly poor American who can’t get one of the hot chicks, if you can afford an Internet connection, you can at least look at ‘em.  Naked and in quantity.  Dressed up like schoolgirls, nuns, Vikings, Hitler’s All-Girl Nazi Legion, you name it.

Face it; Victoria’s Secret can do more for world peace than Alfred Nobel.  And anybody does more for world peace than those incompetent ninnies at the United Nations.

And, of course, let’s not forget the need for first class dental care.  A great California beach bod isn’t worth much if the smile says, “My dentist’s office is in downtown Kiev.”

Which brings us back to dentistry.  (Wondered if I could pull it off, didn’t you? Figured I was so far off topic, I was lost like an Inuit in an ice storm, just doomed to wander around till I fell over dead, didn’t you?) Anyway, in Marathon Man, Dustin’s dentist is really a Nazi war criminal played by Sir Laurence Olivier.  My dentist is, as far as I know, not a Nazi war criminal, and is played by a guy named Gerard.  The only difference between them, as far as I can tell, is that the Nazi dentist promised Dustin he’d stop drilling when Dustin told him where the diamonds were.  Or something like that.  My dentist doesn’t care where the diamonds are.  Gerard won’t stop for anything because he enjoys his work.

I have some dentist issues because the first dentist I ever went to had a couple of things wrong with him.  One: he thought freezing was for fairies.  Two:  he was nuttier than Osama bin Laden, Dennis Rodman, and Oliver Stone combined.  (Oliver Stone, director of JFK and Platoon and all that junk, recently told a bunch of American college students that George Bush is on Ossie bin Laden’s payroll.  I like an episode of The X-Files as much as the next guy, but it sounds like old Ollie’s gone and turned it into a way of life.  But anyway, I digress.)

My first dentist (let’s call him Dr. Mengele, just for fun) sat me down in his chair and swung his X-ray machine over my head.  “What mark did you get in math last term?” he barked.

“B-minus,” I said.  I was only about nine, but even I knew this wasn’t relevant.

“B-minus,” he mused.  “Well, I won’t bother with the lead apron then.  Anybody with a B-minus in math doesn’t deserve to have babies.”

I didn’t know what he was on about then, but it’s kept me up a night or two since.  If that wasn’t weird enough, Dr. Mengele had gone and painted elephant ears on the head of the X-ray machine and a trunk and big, rolling, frightened eyes.  Doc Mengele patted it fondly.  And called it by name.  The X-ray machine’s name was Martha the Elephant.  First, I figured he was just acting the fool; the way adults did when they wanted you to like them.  But he didn’t just exchange a few pleasantries with his imaginary elephant. He had a whole conversation.  And ignored me.

About 10 minutes later, he came out of it, pinned my head back and pulled two perfectly good molars because he said my mouth was too small.  When he got started, I said, “Hey, What about the freezing?”  And he said, “Freezing’s for fairies.  Be a man.”  And I said, “Hey mister, I’m just a little kid,” and he said, “Shut up.” And pulled and I spat blood for two days and when my next dental appointment came up, my Dad and I had a little talk.  He stressed the need for a regular regimen of health care.  I stressed the need for me to avoid crazy people.  We sort of worked out a compromise, although Dad didn’t know it.  He’d drop me off at Dr. Mengele’s office and I’d wave bye-bye and then I’d go hang out in the book store for an hour and then meet my dad outside the dentist’s office and go home.

That went on for years, which explains why I need to have so much work done now.  Other day my current dentist, the non-evil one, Doc Gerard looks in my mouth and says, “You seem to be missing a couple of molars.”

“I know,” I said.  “Dr. Mengele took ‘em out.  Not his fault, though.  It was probably that damned elephant told him to do it.”

“You’re my weirdest patient,” Doc Gerard said.  “I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.  Hold still.  This won’t hurt a bit.”

Of course he lied.  It hurt like hell.  It hurt like being voted Miss Congeniality in the beauty pageant of life.  It hurt like a girl looking deep into your eyes and saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”  It hurt like being the littlest guy in the holding cell.

Any wonder I want to send him to Afghanistan to work on whatever teeth are left underneath those barbecue tarps?