Reality Bites

Reality Bites
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 6, 2014

“I’m trying to get the kids excited about the power of words,” her email said. “They are selecting subjects (for the rest of their lives).”

It was a letter from a high school English teacher, asking if I’d talk to her Year 10s. I cast my mind back to last century and tried to remember being 15.

That was the year I rolled down my camel-brown school socks until they sat like a pair of bagels around my ankles. I thought those bagel-socks made my legs look longer and shapelier. Really, I just looked like someone who needed to pull her socks up.

Aged 15, I went to my first school dance in a raspberry dress paired with mum’s Glomesh clutch hoping I’d be mistaken for Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman. I fantasised about sashaying past some Richard Gere look-alike in my white snakeskin court shoes and overhearing him whisper to his mate: “Look at them bodacious set of ta-tas!” Instead, I spent the night dancing with another Debra Winger I met in the ladies.

When I was 15, adults persisted in asking me: ‘So! What are you going to do when you leave school?’ I’m sure these were grownups who hadn’t talked to a teenager since they’d been one. Their inquiry, loaded with expectation, would hang awkwardly between us. I knew my interlocutor was hoping to hear me say: “Actually, I’m thinking of becoming an astronaut!” That would give them the starter they needed to slide easily into a conversation with this sullen teenager: “Wow! An astronaut hey. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?”

Instead, I said nothing. I’d inspect my bagel-socks: “I dunno.” I took a 15-year-old’s delight in having silenced my interrogator. Our heart-to-heart would be paralysed by rigor mortis and I’d be granted a getaway.

Aged 15, my school’s career counsellor demanded I choose a profession, if only so she could book me in for a week of compulsory work experience. My girlfriends were desperate to impress as wannabe veterinarians and architects and stockbrokers.

I decided I’d do work experience as a dental nurse. It was an odd choice given I was scared of the dentist’s. But I figured dental nurses couldn’t be scared of dentists, could they? More importantly, I might get to wear one of those pink nurses’ uniforms with a little watch hanging from my breast pocket. I could twirl my hair into a bun and wear soft-soled shoes.

And so I arrived at 8am outside the shiny white doors of my designated dental surgery. The dentist seemed friendly and not-so-scary, but I think that was because we were both standing up.

All that week I made excellent cups of tea. I presented miniature toothbrushes to little kids. I gave knowing smiles to all the patients sitting glumly in the waiting room.

On the last day, the dental nurse called in sick. The dentist asked for my help with a patient. Puffing up with pride, I tied a perfect bow on my crunchy paper apron and blew a lungful of air into my washing up gloves, the way I’d seen Delvene Delaney do it on The Young Doctors.

A very old man was reclined in the dentist’s chair. He was staring at the ceiling with his mouth stretched open. The dentist presented me with a long metal nozzle. He called it a high volume evacuator, but I can tell you now, it was a saliva sucker.

The dentist put on his pretend glasses, and began drilling a putrid incisor. I gingerly inserted my metal probe into the patient’s slackened mouth, trying to steer it inside his cheek and down beside his gums towards his one remaining molar. But the nozzle had other ideas. It lurched sideways and suckered itself to the root of his tongue.

I panicked as the old man gagged and gurgled. I couldn’t tell if he was talking or choking so I yanked on the high volume evacuator. I thought if I jerked it hard it’d break the suction from his tongue. But the patient only yelped in shock and pain. His arms flew up and knocked over a tray of instruments.

That’s when the dentist grabbed my hand and shoved me aside. He gently let a puff of air escape from the nozzle which released the suction. The old man’s tongue flopped back into his mouth.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in dentist’s detention, tidying up the magazines. And then I slunk home.

A weekend later, back at school, the work experience report cards were handed out. Mine said: “I don’t think Miss Thomas has the necessary skills or temperament for the dental profession.” I was mortified. As were several of my teachers. I don’t think they’d had anyone flunk work experience before.

So I decided to become a journalist instead. And now I embarrass myself for a living.