Tradition and loyalty are quite wonderful attributes when applied to most situations in life. Still, I would like to share with you some real experiences, which I believe may bring into question the validity of such noble intent. See my grandfather Gonga, went to a dentist named Benny Freeman. My father’s dentist was Benny Freeman. Benny Freeman was also my dentist. You may have missed the stand-out point here – so I will be blunt. By the time Benny Freeman was my dentist, he was a very old man indeed, complete with some similar vintage dental practices and equipment to match. His surgery was located on the 2th floor of an old, heritage listed Queen Street building in Brisbane. The surgery was accessed by two equally heritage designed, dark timber paneled lifts with their accompanying heavy metal concertina gates. The family logic was simple enough – if he was good enough for my grandfather, then he was good enough for us grandkids. Being a loyal bunch, our Baskerville line followed in the family tradition – Benny Freeman was our dentist and that was that. Now the concept of pain killing injections was, in Benny’s eyes, only for wimps. His World War 1 attitude was that you should just ‘grin and bear it lad’. I can tell you folks, there was no grinning as this bear of a man caused such intolerable pain as he worked the tooth nerve to tears. His hot air puffer, used to dry the drilled tooth cavity, was initially heated over the exposed flame of a Bunsen burner. The warm puffing air, giving relief to the recently engorged hole, was soon negated by the pain of the hot metal spout branding your bottom lip as he rested it there for support. For his more detailed work, Benny would put on an extended set of ‘Groucho Marx’ type springy eye spectacles. Look, he was not totally insensitive to your feelings and would occasionally ask if everything was OK. Any muffled reply expressed through the huge cotton wads padding your mouth was simply interpreted by him as a “yes!”, and so the operation continued without change. Now Benny’s drill was not like the high-speed diamond heads bits of today. No sir – his drill was so slow you could actually see it spin with the naked (and by now rather fearful) eye. The drill was powered by a series of black rubber pulleys. The spinning movements of these pulleys became the major point of distracted focus as he would perform his oft repeated drilling procedures. The power supply to the drill was controlled by a loud clicking foot switch, which Benny would continually drive like a VW clutch in some busy peak-hour traffic flow. This grand museum piece of 19th century drill engineering emanated an eerie high-pitched resonance throughout the whole surgery. Shivers would run down the spine of any other sibling sitting just outside in the wait-room on those dark mahogany seats. Being second in line meant twice the pain – firstly, as the vicarious suffering of a waitee and then later as the direct recipient of the drill’s activity. Well, we arrived one day at the building for our Mum double-booked appointment. David could see that there would be an ugly brotherly argument taking place in the surgery soon about who would take the coveted first service. So he decided to set for us both a selection contest to determine which of us would be the first patient. “Lets each hold a lift open on the ground floor and at the given signal we must each take our lift to level 10 and then back to level 2. First one back to level 2 is the first served” explained David. “Sounds fair. Lets go” was my competitive reply. My lift ran beautifully. Straight up to level 10 she went and then it rattled back down to level 2 – all without a missing beat. I flung open the metal gate and ran through the door of the surgery, confident that my perfect physical execution would be rewarded with that sought-after front running. So imangine how I was totally taken aback when I saw David and that sheepish smirk which he gave me as he glanced up from his relaxed reading position in the wait–room. Still, I know I had to accept the inevitable result of the contest. But, on this particular day I had to endure three forms of torture. Firstly the torture of the wait room and listening to that blood – curdling pitch. Secondly, in the dentist chair with the direct attention of that ‘special’ drill. Finally the emotional torture and suffering when David revealed that he had simply gone straight to the 2nd floor, whilst I had naively completed the yo-yo lift contest all alone.
