Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [52]
2:30
by Bob Tarby
[1] Distinguished guests, deans, faculty, staff, and of course classmates, friends, and families—welcome! Welcome to the 138th HSDM-HMS Class Day. To my classmates— my friends and now my colleagues—thank you for the privilege to represent our class today.
[2] I’m not the most doggedly determined dental student that’s graced Harvard’s hallways. Therefore, as my classmates would only expect, I would like to start with an old joke:
[3] What’s the best time to go see the dentist? Tooth hurty.
[4] If you didn’t get it, just give it a few seconds to sink in. If you still don’t get it, I can explain it later, although I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be funny. But maybe it’s better that way, because to all the dentists in the room, dental jokes are never funny. Anyone who’s seen Seinfeld remembers the episode where Jerry tells another dental wisecrack: what’s the difference between a dentist and a sadist? – Newer magazines. His dentist, Dr. Whatley, seeks his revenge in an unnecessarily prolonged and painful procedure that is peppered with question upon question requiring narrative answers… Why is it, by the way, that dentists never ask simple yes or no questions when they’ve got their hands in your mouth?
[5] I’m sorry that Jerry’s procedure was painful… but what do you think dentist jokes are to Dr. Whatley, or to us, the thirtysomething individuals with purple lapels walking across the stage in about 20 minutes? “What do you call a doctor that didn’t get into medical school? A dentist!?” Ouch.
[6] I’m certainly not here today solely to tell dentist jokes. Instead, I want to pose a nuanced idea about the intersection of humor and dentistry. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking seriously about what makes dentistry unique. As we often cite, dentistry is a subspecialty of medicine, and our first two years in the medical school have been invaluable to who we have become as professionals. We are not medical doctors but doctors of dental medicine, and there is an important difference. Two things set dentistry apart from all other medical specialties:
1) dentistry deals (almost exclusively) with the oral cavity and maxillofacial region, and
2) dentistry is the butt of a lot of jokes
[7] There are plenty of other doctor jokes—I think proctology and urology probably bear the brunt of these—but I’ll refrain from discussing other specialties and other orifices. Why do we care so much about the mouth? [= primary question essay will explore]
[8] Dentistry is not a contemporary construct. Thousands of years ago, Incans placed shell implants, and Egyptians inlaid their teeth with precious metals. Even the institution has been important enough to differentiate its educational system— dental school is different than medical school. History aside, the mouth is the only orifice that smiles back at us in the mirror every morning, indicating the implicit importance of dentistry. A smile goes beyond simply anatomy; its esthetic quality communicates health, well-being, and even status. This makes the mouth and the face—the orofacial structures, in dental lingo—important.
[9] As student clinicians, my classmates and I saw evidence of this everyday in the dental clinic: our patients sit in the chair, fidget anxiously, and say, apologetically, “I just ate lunch” or “I didn’t have a chance to brush” or “I try to floss regularly”. They are embarrassed to open their mouths in front of people who chose mouths and teeth as their professional undertaking. Judging by their reticence to “open up”, we can safely assume that this is an intensely personal space: the mouth runs the gamut from function and survival to social hierarchy. Put differently, you can’t eat without teeth, and you can’t get a job at a Top 10 company without a flawless line of pearly whites. Or at least that’s the conception.
[10] If teeth serve such important functions, where do all these dental jokes come from? Everything is Freudian, and jokes are no exception.