Just Spit!
Fourteen year old Sandi settled into the mint green reclining chair in her uncle's dental office. With paper bib clipped around her neck, she was waiting for Uncle Dick to step into the treatment room. Reba, the able dental assistant, had laid the necessary instruments on a round tray and had turned on the water which swirled continuously around the bowl of the small basin beside the chair. The only sounds were the barely audible swishing of the clear water, soft music coming from the speaker in the corner of the room, and the hums of conversation in the room next door.
Sandi could have dozed off, but a cheerful Uncle Dick walked into the treatment room calling his favorite niece by name, asking just what he could do for her that afternoon. After examining dental x-rays and poking around her mouth with a needle-nose instrument, he explained that she had a cavity in the tooth that had been troubling her, and he needed to fill it. While he chatted amiably, and without letting Sandi see the "shot", he quickly injected the numbing medicine in the proper area. She wasn't able to respond to his questions and comments because her mouth was filled with a suction tube for saliva, a miniature handled mirror, a chunk of sterile gauze, and now one side was going totally numb. The drilling began. The tooth was filled. Reba completed her job of removing all the items packing the patient's mouth. Following that, she squirted a small amount of water into Sandi's mouth for rinsing.
Then Uncle Dick made his announcement, "Honey, you can expectorate now."
"Huh?" Sandi mumbled.
Patiently, he repeated himself, enunciating each syllable. "You can ex-pect-o-rate."
Because of a numbed jaw and lip, Sandi garbled with water dribbling down her chin, "Expect a rate of what, Uncle Dick?"
Chuckling at her question, he declared a little louder, "Sandi, just spit out in the bowl."
Reba hurried out of the room before she burst into laughter in front of her boss and patient. In the meantime, Sandi dutifully followed her uncle's simple instructions to "just spit!"