Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.
CP: You are such a paragon of right living, sobriety and moderation. Let me guess: You have, like, one or two cavities.
RN: Oh, please.
CP: The fluoridated water must have missed our house on Elder Lane. We Pecks ran up monster bills at the dentist in Evanston.
RN: Our family dentist in the 1960s — I hated him so much, I've blocked his name from my memory — probably took half of my parents' disposable income.
CP: I never seemed to dodge the dreaded pronouncement: "I'm seeing a couple of cavities that will need to be filled." Precociously, I would argue, "But isn't that a baby tooth that is just going to fall out anyway? Let's wait and see."
RN: As a way to minimize what would otherwise be daylong anxiety attacks, my mother wouldn't tell us in advance when we were headed to the dentist. Instead, she would sandbag us as we came home from school. "Leave your coats on; we're walking up to Dr. What's-His-Name's office." Great.
CP: If not the sandbag, there's always bribery. We often were treated to a post-dentist stop at a nearby soda fountain. "Green Rivers all around," my mom would say, like this was some kind of whiskey bar and she had just come into a bounty hunter's fortune. Which sort of defeated the whole tooth-care thing.
