Glad to see all is OK, and that the SS Sturmbahnfuhers were at another location.
Yeah....I will never forget that guy. His name was Dr. Bradford---or more likely his real name was Herr Doktor von Bratvoord, at Buchenwald, or Dachau, or Auschwitz.....wherever he started out from. He held my mouth open by putting a clamp in my jaws, and he got my upper lip pinched between the clamp and my upper teeth. I was trying to twitch my lip loose, he saw it and said, "Pinching your lip, huh?"
And he reached up and tightened it down another notch! And laughed.
What kind of individual would do that to a small, frightened child? Yeah, I will never forget that guy.
I suppose I've been pretty lucky with dentists, but I remember a few less pleasant incidents. When I was about 13, a couple of years after your 1965 incident, I went to the dental hospital for an extraction. It was where they trained dentists and I think it was free, which is why I was there.
On the way in I passed another kid standing in front of the washbasins bawling his eyes out and spitting blood all over the place.
The dentist said sotto voice "I think you're a bit tougher than him...". But it wasn't an encouraging spectacle. Obviously they never read Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence Patients".
After I went into the Air Force, I had to have my wisdom teeth removed. The Air Force doctor got them out, stitched me up, then called in my buddy, whom our sergeant had sent down with me to take me home when the procedure was done. The doctor handed him a prescription note, told him, "Take this down to the pharmacy and get it filled, then take him back to the barracks and put him to bed." Then he looked at me and said, "The incisions will ooze for 24 hours. Whatever you do, do not spit---if you to, you will tear the sutures."
Okay. So all that day, whenever my mouth got full, of course, I swallowed. About 7:30 that night, I made a run for the latrine and vomited up a whole stomachful of blood and goo. At that point I said to myself that if puking my guts up didn't tear any sutures, then spitting wouldn't, either. I went down to the C.Q. on the first floor, found me an empty coffee can, and that became my spittoon for the next few days. Another experience I will never forget, trust me.
They've moved a long way since then though, and the costs have gone up with it.
There is still a dental hospital and maybe the kids are still there bawling their eyes out ...
Boy, I sure hope not. When you and I were kids, they were only a step or two removed from knocking out teeth with hammers and chisels---I would certainly hope that pediatric dentistry has improved drastically, for the sake of the kids. The last thing the world needs is another generation of traumatized children.
