Gold Medals are for losers, apparently

Happy Sunday, readers! I have a short one for you today. I was just laughing about this story because I was thinking about I have to go to the dentist soon. But we are going WAYYYYY back in time. Back when I was 12 years old, jeeze that was more than half my life ago. I'm getting old, you guys, a millennial in true form if you will. Back then, I was just starting my club volleyball career. We had gone to the Junior Olympics and won Gold! What an honor to be part of such an amazing group of girls and a team that was so instrumentally crucial to loving being an athlete and competitor for the rest of my life. But this story really is only about what happened after I came back from the Junior Olympics. For one, the night I arrived back in Hawaii from Minnesota, I ended up in the Emergency department because my little sister poked me in the eye with her finger after stretching out and not knowing my face was literally lying on the same pillow as her. *insert eye roll here* But that's a story for a different time. I had a dentist appointment the following day. And at that age, yes, of course I was about to show my bling to my dentist. Walking into the office with my chest up all proud, wearing my gold medal heavily hanging around my neck, I have a seat in the throne of torture. I had hated the dentist from when I first started going, I had cavity issues because of my high candy intake and dentists just always had it out for me for some reason. Hey, I was giving them money (or actually my insurance was), so why give me such a hard time? But today was going to be different, I could share my big accomplishment and he could take it easy on me, share my joy and pride in a gold medal. As soon as the dental hygienist was finished doing her thing AKA most of the things... (side note: thank you, hygienists for doing the most work), she says, "Okay, be right back. I'm going to grab the dentist." I sit and wait, straighten up in my almost horizontal position with that god awful metal teeth opener making me drool and continue to stare into the bright mouth light with my dopey plastic rimmed sunglasses. I hear the door croak open. It's Dr.Beaver (yes, that's his actual name).

"Oh my goodness, what do we have here? A gold medal is it?"

I assume my Mom already told him all the details being that it was covered with that stupid drape that goes over your chest whenever you visit the dentist.

He looks into my mouth, scoots his rolling stool the imaging near the wall, then goes right back to my mouth and uses that little handheld mirror does a few back and forths with it to look around the entire space and laughs, "Well, a gold medal doesn't mean anything if you have cavities. That's no gold in my book."

And that's when I actually started hating going to the dentist, and MY dentist to be exact. If you're reading this Dr.Beaver, yes I do only regularly floss one week before I see you, and yes you did give me PTSD.