Uncle Manny spent fifteen years as a Catskills stand-up comic. After that, he wanted to do “something really funny” he said, and became a dentist. Nobody gets a kick out of his job (or life) as much as my Uncle Manny.

Now I, on the other hand, do not think of dentistry as a real yuck fest. So Manny the comedian (who wears a white dentist coat with a red sequined tie) takes this stupid pair of chattering teeth and pretends to talk or sing through them, during my appointments.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” I asked, while watching the teeth belt out, “Like . . a big pizza pie . . . That’s amore . . . ”

“Nu?” the teeth said.  “A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar . . .”

I reached up, put my hand around the teeth, and snapped them shut.

As it happened, two weeks ago I felt an ache in a bottom tooth. Then I reached Olympic standards in the ‘postpone the dentist’ category.But finally, with a mouthful of butter crunch ice cream, I hit high C on the agony scale. Rule #2: A dentist visit is mandatory if ice cream’s out. (Rule #1 comes later.)

Uncle Manny was thrilled.“Bubeleh!” he pinched my cheek.“I love root canals!”

I ran out to the car phone and called a dentist locator. 1-800-DIDN’T- FLOSS?  “Somebody who understands dental phobias,” I requested.“Not some chanting crackpot who serves herbal tea and says things like, ‘wherever you go, there you are’.  I want the Grateful Dead over loudspeakers, and I want intravenous Novocain.”

“How about a psychiatrist?” the woman said.

Eventually, I wound up in the wrong dentist’s chair. 

“You’re a big girl,” this doctor said.“It’s time you got over these silly fears.”

And that’s all I needed to hear. I removed the dental gadgets and up I stood. “Yay, me!” I silently thought.

“Where are you going?” he asked, incredulously.

“To Uncle Manny’s.Where else?”

And so, I found out something important about fear of the dentist, and fear in general.It’s relative, sometimes, to how you are treated.

“I’m scared, Uncle Manny,” I said, standing in his doorway.

“Come sit, my little bagela,” Manny said. “Everybody’s afraid of something.” He was wearing a Groucho Marx nose and glasses.

I settled into the chair and gripped the arms to slow my trembling.

He held a toothbrush like a cigar. “Beyond the Alps, lies more Alps and the Lord alps those who alp themselves.” Then he picked up my wrist, looked at his watch and took my pulse, “Either she’s dead or my watch has stopped.” And he fluttered his eyebrows Groucho-style. 

“Oh God.”  I closed my eyes, but I must admit, the gripping had ceased. 

And this leads me to rule #1. If you are in any situation where you can’t say you’re scared because you fear being belittled, you ought to question what you’re doing there in the first place.

And so, I made it through, but it wasn’t easy.  

Nearly at my car, I realized I’d forgotten my purse. I went back to the office and saw Manny, with giant fake ears, making a little girl (who was gripping the chair) laugh. 

There are stand-alone moments in childhood, I think, that make a big difference, good and bad.

I hoped that the frightened little girl would remember Uncle Manny and know it was okay to grip chairs, but even better - I hoped that maybe she would grow up without needing a whole lot of chairs to grip in the first place.

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