The Utility of Poetry for Dentistry

While my son underwent the filling of two cavities today, the dentist asked me what I've been reading. I told him how I'd just begun teaching an introductory course in literature and how excited I was to cover a range of works with a fresh group of students.

He recited a ballad to us
as he filled two cavities for my son

This led to him telling us about how he learned some poetry from Mad Magazine back in the day, an odd remix of "Casey at Bat" and Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." He even left my son with the suction running so he could ferret through his office to try to find me a copy of the poem. He'd kept it all these years.

"Has learning poetry made your life better?" I asked, fishing for some nugget to take back to my students.

"Do you know how many laughs I've gotten from reciting poetry?!"

And that led, inevitably, to his recounting the story of being a missionary in the South and coming across some toothless 95-year old man spitting tobacco into a can who recited to him the ballad of "Elmer and the Bear." Mark furiously wrote it down in a notebook and memorized it.

My son was late getting back to class because of Elmer. Our dentist took enormous pleasure at reciting the entire thing. He seriously stopped working and relished delivering the lines -- laughing behind his mask. His assistant patiently waited, with a look on her face like she'd heard this ballad a few times before.

So here's the kicker. My teenage son had been pretty down in the mouth, so to speak, about getting these cavities filled. One might even say he was surly. But by the time Dr. Fullmer had finished his bear ballad, my son was smiling.

Yep, literature is equipment for living.