Dental Care a Harbinger of Change

I noticed at once that everything was different. The receptionist was a different woman. So was the hygienist. It was she who told me that my old dentist had sold the practice and with no warning, I was to be in the care of a new dentist.

I've been in the same dental practice for many years. But this is the fourth dentist in that same time period. The practice keeps being sold.

I originally chose Dr. Coveyduck because he was so good with a friend of mine who lived with special needs. No sooner did I get established as his patient than Dr. Coveyduck decided to retire, leaving me in the hands of a stranger. The new dentist turned out to be ok, but it was only a matter of luck.

As a whole, I've had mixed luck with dentists. My teeth are excellent. I didn't have my first cavity until I was 40 or so.

My perfect teeth didn’t stop one dentist, a flashy, good looking blond who I chose because he was gay, from trying to hard sell me cosmetic dental work. I had previously thought I looked just fine but apparently I had a gigantic space between my front teeth.

The next dentist I tried 10 years later put a big red X on my file and refused to see me except at the last appointment of the day, so the instruments could be sterilized. I told him that I thought they should sterilize after every patient, not just the ones that fit my particular demographic profile. That's when I went looking for Dr. Coveyduck.

Now I'm on Dentist number four in the same practice. It reminds me of when I had the one checking account which rode through multiple corporate consolidations resulting in my unintentional patronage of five different banks. I finally switched to a credit union.

Nothing is as constant as change, they say. I still call that big department store May D&F (others know it as Macys).

I  don't care how many people live in the Stapleton part of town - to me it will always be the old airport.

The bookstore may have moved north years ago, but that building at First and Milwaukee is still the Tattered Cover building as far as I'm concerned.

Is it a sign of age that I can't adjust to the changes around me? No - my mother accused me of resisting change when I was in my 20s. She claimed they had to trick me into accepting a new teddy bear when I was a toddler and the old one disintegrated because of over-use.

I'm pretty much set in my ways. My neighbor saw me carrying a bag into my condo the other day. "Sunday," she said. "Must be bar-b-que."

Servers Regan and Betty don't even bother to give me a menu at the Village Inn any more. They know what I'm going to order.

When I took a week off from work recently, everyone in the office just assumed I was going to San Diego because that’s where I always go. Ha! Fooled them! This time I went to Minneapolis instead.

See, I can vary from my norm once in a while. I might even have bar-b-que on Saturday this week, just to shake things up.