Personal Oral Hygiene

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When Knights Were Bold-2 continued

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The announcer spoke. "Presenting the first main event of the day, twelve knights mounted on the finest steeds, dressed in the finest armor, carrying the latest weapons, and wearing the colors of  The Chicago Academy of Dental Research Dentistry’s finest."

With this statement twelve knights charged across the playing field in full regalia, racing like the wind, and brandishing their weapons as if they were face to face with the monster. A lead knight carried a banner with their motto which read:

This Pledge We Made and With
Blood Did Seal To Find That
Damned Dragon's Achilles’ Heel.

Next on the field came the knights wearing the colors of the school of restorative dentistry and carrying the latest weapons of their field. The air was filled with the whine of air turbines, the clatter of engine driven amalgam pluggers, and the scrape of all types of carvers. Some brandished air-conditioned mixing slabs and hand instruments of all shapes and descriptions. Wiggle bugs were wiggling, and casting machines were whirring (both direct and indirect techniques were demonstrated). Some knights wore silver armor, but the inlay knights were covered with gold with traces of cement oozing from the joints. A few even wore suits of plastic and synthetic porcelain. The dragon would shudder if he could see all this array of talent that would be loosed against him in the coming year. Their banner caught my eye.

Tho We Haven't Kept The Dragon
From Devouring These Poor Souls,
We Pledge To Do Our Damnedest
To Fill Up All His Holes.

Then onto the field rode the champions of occlusion, wearing the colors of the school of occlusal rehabilitation. Their weapons were articulators and they brandished every shape and description. Across the field they came, some busily adjusting the condyler paths, some the incisal guide, and others were going through lateral excursions that would make an Egyptian belly dancer hide with shame. The Bennett movement was a sight to behold. Some of these articulators looked like Rube Goldberg devices, and one knight loudly exhorted that his was the only one that would copy the mandible, which he said rotated on two axes in the same plane, at the same time. I thought, if he can make the mandible do that, then Newton had better start worrying about his law of gravity-this boy will break it any day now. Another brandished an articulator he invented that was so complicated that even he couldn’t understand how it worked, let alone explain it to someone else. The thought crossed my mind that if the dragon ever got his foot caught in one of the bear traps they were brandishing, he would probably die of old age before he could extricate himself from it, and the dentists could just sit on their operating stools until he did. As they rode off the field their banner displayed these words:

Tho Engineers and Genii,
We Will Not Be Content
Until We Find A Patient
That Fits Our Instrument

With a blare of trumpets the next group of knights rode onto the field flying the colors of the school of Applied Nutrition. They were a sight to behold, dressed in armor of compost, with weapons of black strap molasses and wheat germ. Look! Some had little planter boxes in their saddlebags and thus had their own portable organic gardens right with them. I guess these knights were subject to sinking spells and occasionally needed a handy pick-me-up. One thing came to my mind - there was safety in their madness because any self-respecting dragon would starve before he would eat that stuff. Their banner caught my eye.

Appearing next were a group of knights that have all but withdrawn from the battle with the dragon of dental disease. These were carrying the colors of the school of Orthodontia and they loudly proclaimed that the fight with the dragon was outside their field. Their armor set them apart, as it was made-up of myriads of wires, exactly tempered and ready to be bent into all shapes and forms. The weapons they carried were appliances. There was the twin wire, the edgewise, and the universal with many individual variations. At their waists hung pliers by the score and the crackle of arc welders and the snap of rubber bands could be heard above the hoofbeats as they rode across the field The crowd seemed a little perplexed at the exact purpose of this group until they read the banner that fluttered over their heads.

Our Only Quarrel With The Dragon
Is We Are In An Awful State
If He Gets Them All Devoured
Before We Can Set Them Straight

Before the appearance of the next group of knights, the announcer warned the spectators to put smoked glass over their eyes. Amid the scurrying to do so, onto the field rode knights that dazzled the crowd as the bright sunlight reflected from the shimmering surface of their armor of burnished gold. They were the colors of the gold foil study clubs. As they charged across the field the rat-a-tat-tat of motor driven pluggers, and the tap, tap of hand mallets could be heard. Rubber dams w e r e snapping in the breeze, and gold foil annealers that were absolutely windproof proudly burned even as they were carried across the field at full gallop. Some knights had difficulty in getting their automatic pluggers adjusted, but most of them had the rough adjustment set and were busily working on the fine tuning. Obviously irked at the queries from the crowd as to why they did not appear wearing the restorative dentistry colors, the leader of this group condescended to explain that the required digital skill obviously set them apart. Carried on the longest plugger point I have ever seen was their motto: