A PIG S JOURNAL MY DAY AT THE DENTISTS’

BY ARIANNA ZHAO, AGE 11, 2023

Hello there. My name is Josie, and I am a pig if you couldn’t tell already. However, many people seem annoyed when I am around (so it’s a pretty safe bet that I’m the source of their annoyance) and call me Angry Josie the pig. DO NOT THINK THAT I CANNOT HEAR YOU, EVERYBODY WHO CALLS ME ANGRYJOSIETHEPIG!

Anyways, my psychologist - she’s the only one who’s a pignobody knows her name, everybody just calls her the Good Minded Pig - told me that my “anger issues” would lower if I wrote in a journal. So here I am. (By the way, I think the Rude Minded Pig suits her better…)

Today is my first trip to the dentists’. Unfortunately, pigs don’t have dentists, so we have to go into the people’s world to get our teeth checked.

Many dentists don’t allow pigs, so my Mother finally found one who is perfectly content with treating a pig. The good news is, us pigs don’t have to do a dentist appointment for every 3 human years, since we mature differently.

I was very reluctant to go.Finally, my mother and I arrived at the dentist's office.

My dentist was a pretty girl with long hair, a white cloak, blue gloves, and a blue piece of fabric that covered her nose and mouth. She told me to lay down in a comfy leather bed looking platform, and asked me what TV show I wanted to watch.

Ohmy,thisisgoingtobegreat,I thought. The show I chose was Peppa Pig, of course. And those of you out there that say Peppa Pig is for little kids only, YOU ARE WRONG!

Just as I was actually getting excited about this appointment, the pretty dentist told me to open my mouth. Then, she took a little silver stick with a little mirror on the end. Petite, I guess you could call it.

And guess what she did? She stuckitrightinmymouth, and started looking inside! How rude…

Afterwards, she took out a thin piece of string from a rectangular box and put the string between my teeth. I was so surprised, I almost bit her hand off! When she took it out, the middle of the string was all yucky and yellow. But what was worse, was then she said, “Josie, you have to take better care of your teeth, by flossing!” She handed my mother a box of string. On the screen, when Peppa pig was planting a garden, the dentist took out a toothbrush. It looked just like the one I kept at home behind the sink, but it had a long piece of white wire connected to it, and a button on the wire. She put some white toothpaste on it, and put it on my teeth.

I expected my teeth to feel shiny and clean afterwards, but my first reaction was: EWWWWWWWW! I looked at my Mother as if demanding: “WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME THIS WAS COMING?!”

The toothpaste was so sour, I wanted to spit it right out. Finally, the brushing stopped, and the dentist took out a tube full of bubbles and stuck it in my mouth. I expected it to be some x-ray or some other fancy human tech, but all of a sudden, the dentist pressed a button. The next thing I knew, water was shooting into my mouth.

It felt so horrible, with water mixed with sour toothpaste, that I choked and spat the water right out. It landed on the dentists’ fancy white cloak!

A clock on the wall read 2:48. My appointment ended at 3:00. Almost done, I thought with relief. Little did I know that the worst would come soon enough. The pretty dentist asked me whether I liked mint flavor or bubble-gum flavor better. I chose bubble gum. Then, she took a tube that said “bubble gum”, unscrewed it, and put it on a mini-medical tissue, and dabbed it on my teeth. I hoped it would taste like bubblegum, but the feeling inside my mouth was horrible! It was like somebody just smeared peanut butter on our teeth - a pig's worst fear.

That one hour of “teeth treatment” gave me a very bad impression of a dental office. The dentist didn’t even give me a prize at the end, because she said I still had a lot to improve with flossing and brushing! And let me just say that I left the dental office in very bad spirits.