(Photo by Anna Shvets)

“So, how’s work?”

It was a fairly standard question, Humphrey thought as he sat there, reclined into almost a lying position, the bright lamp overhead making him have to squint. Unfortunately, Humphrey also had his mouth full of dental equipment. His dentist, Dr Iver, or Shelly as she insisted on being called, continued to work while she waited for Humphrey to respond. He knew she was waiting because she kept giving him short glances with an expectant expression.

“Uh,” he managed to utter without choking on the pooled liquid in the back of his throat.

Dr Iver, Shelly, pulled the drill and suction tool out of his mouth.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yesh,” he slurred his words due to the numbness and bits of cotton still wedged in his cheeks.

“Work’s going alright?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Humphrey replied, opening his mouth back up so she could resume her work.

“That’s wonderful,” Shelly replied, her eyes squinting as she smiled behind her face mask. “You test toys, right?”

“Uh huh,” he grunted, still with his mouth open.

He’d told her about his work when he’d come in for his checkup last week. She’d been quite interested in it then and it didn’t seem like her feelings had diminished any during the last few days. Toy testing wasn’t exactly an exciting job, but neither was it a very common one and so he had gotten used to people being interested. At first, any way. Once they found out that he did not, in fact, play with toys all day but instead just ran them through various safety tests to determine the durability, chemical composition, and other important factors, most people lost interest. Not so with Shelly.

“Do you ever make any toys?” she asked as she leaned back in to resume drilling on his cavities.

Humphrey’s head filled with the high pitched whine of the drill against his tooth and it took a decent amount of self control not to roll his eyes at her for asking him another question right as she’d resumed working on his mouth. How was he supposed to talk? He tried to say ‘no’ without disturbing her tools but between being numb and everything else it came out sounding more like ‘Oh’.

“Is it hurting?” Shelly asked, pausing yet again.

“No,” he told her, still trying to hide his impatience, “I wash juth trying to shay no, I don’t make toysh.”

“Mmm,” she nodded and began drilling again.

He could feel her next question coming even as her drill began to spin up once more. It was the question that the few people who didn’t lose interest upon learning about his job almost always asked next.

“Do people ever bring you their own toy ideas?” she asked.

Perhaps it would be best if he just ignored her questions. He only had so much time in his lunch break to get this work done and he didn’t want to go over his time with all the starting and stopping. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to relax into the chair as best he could. Meditation was something he’d recently been trying to learn and he figured this would be as good as any other time to practice what he’d been learning.

Slow, intentional breaths, in and out, in and out. He took note of points in his body where he was uncomfortable and, one by one, tried to adjust his weight to minimize the discomfort. There wasn’t much he could do about his jaw but with the rest of him feeling more relaxed he began to visualize a calm beach. The sun was shining on his face and warm sand was gently packed around his sides. There was no breeze but the air wasn’t stagnant or muggy.

“Humphrey?” Shelly spoke, breaking the illusion and calling him back to the dentist chair.

“Hhnn?” He blinked at the bright lamp as he tried to open his eyes to look at her.

“I need you to keep your mouth open wide for me,” Shelly told him.

“Oh, shorry,” he hadn’t noticed how he’d begun to close his mouth.

“No problem,” she said after he’d widened his mouth again so she could get back to work. “I know it can get pretty tiring sometimes. If you’d like I can put a bite block in and then you wouldn’t need to worry about it.”

“No, I gah i’,”Humphrey managed to say.

“So what about it, do people ever bring you their toy ideas?” she asked not one minute after she’d gotten back to drilling.

“Yesh,” he uttered in frustration, hoping she’d just focus on her work.

To his complete disappointment, Shelly nodded and asked, “Any good ones?”

“Oh,” he said and then promptly shut his eyes again.

“Never?” Shelly asked sounding more than a bit doubtful.

“Oh,” he grunted back.

“You know,” she began and Humphrey braced himself for the sales pitch he knew was coming. “I think I’ve got a pretty excellent idea for a toy.”

I doubt that, he wanted to say but settled on “Huh.” He thought he already knew what she was going to say but didn’t want to give her any more fodder just in case he was wrong.

“What do you think about toy dentist tools?”

“Oh.”

“No, you haven’t heard of that before, or no, you don’t think it’s a good idea?”

She stopped drilling on his tooth. Humphrey opened his eyes and found her just sitting beside him, looking expectant.

“It’sh not a good idea,” he told her. “There’sh already dentist toysh but they aren’t very popular, or shafe.”

“No, I think they’d be great,” Shelly pressed onward. “They could help kids understand what a dentist does, and help them feel more comfortable.”

“And it teachesh them to shtick shtuff in each othersh mouthsh,” Humphrey stated in flat tones. “Every year there’sh kidsh how get shtabbed in the throat, or the eye, with thosh toysh. They alsho shpread shicknesh. Shome even manage to choke on the  toysh.”

“I don’t think you’re –

“Look,” he cut her off, “I’ve only got my lunch break to finish thish tooth. It’sh gonna take all day if we keep thish up.”

“Right,” Shelly blushed, “sorry. I just think there’s a real opportunity here.”

“Then talk to a toy manufacturer,” he said as he tried to resituate himself in the chair. “Or have it designed and three-D printed and then you can shell it yourshelf and see how well it goesh.”

She returned to her work without another word and Humphrey relaxed. He didn’t like being rude, and he knew he’d been more than little short with her, but he’d had this conversation before about other bad toy ideas. Perhaps if they had been a different scenario he would have taken the time to really explain why he didn’t like her idea but sitting in a dentist chair was not an ideal situation.

“So, toy safety,” Shelly mused aloud, though there didn’t seem to be any question in there so Humphrey let it slide. “I remember when I was growing up, my brother and I each got a toy bow and arrow, the kind with suction cups on the arrow tips. It didn’t take long before those suction cups were gone and we were putting holes in the wall.”

Humphrey was well aware of that toy, and several others like it, back before foam dart shooters replaced them. It didn’t seem that long ago he’d found a toy rifle that fired suction cup darts. Unfortunately, the barrel was just the right shape to also fit a pencil that, if fired, could puncture skin. His demonstration to the manufactures had ended with him loading the rifle in just such a way and shooting a pumpkin. The toy was discontinued immediately.

“What about those slime toys?” Shelly asked. “Seems like they’d make you pretty sick if you ate that stuff.”

“Dy’uh’ree’uh,” Humphrey replied, although he regretted it at once since he worried Shelly would take that as permission to resume her questioning.

“Yeah, I can see that. And I guess they don’t make them smell very good so kids probably wouldn’t even think to put it into their mouth.”

Never underestimate children and their willingness to stick things in their mouth, he thought to himself.

Humphrey shrugged but didn’t offer any further response. There were lots of slime toys out there. He didn’t like them, as a general rule, but they were all mostly the same thing. Basic petroleum based slimes that would give a person a pretty good case of the runs but not much else. Of course, there were occasionally slime toys that weren’t so innocuous. Only chemical testing could reveal what was really in some of those things and it never ceased to shock him what some companies were willing to put into their products. It was rare that anything truly deadly was used but there were plenty of toxic substances out there that could make a child incredibly sick.

Most of the time when he told people about some of the things he came across they would assume it was toys from other countries, as though companies here weren’t willing to cut some corners to save on production costs. True, things like lead pant were practically never seen on domestic products these days, but there were dozens of other things that went into toy design, not just chemicals, that could hurt someone.

The drilling stopped and Shelly began adding in the filling. The odd smell of it made Humphrey’s nostrils burn slightly but he was used to that. He’d always had what his parents called ‘soft teeth’. It didn’t matter how well be brushed or flossed, he always seemed to have cavities.

“Bite down on this,” Shelly instructed as she placed a thin strip of paper in his mouth. He did so, working his back and forth a bit. The paper would leave a colored mark on the places his teeth were touching so Shelly could grind down any high spots.

It took a few tries before Humphrey’s bite felt mostly normal again and Shelly gave his mouth one more rinse before taking off his bib and bringing his chair back up into the upright position.

“All done,” she said and Humphrey, checking the time on his phone, gave her a wane smile. He was going to be late getting back to work. “Hank at the front desk will schedule you for you next appointment. Also,” she added quickly, “I like your suggestion about seeing if I can make a prototype myself of the dentist toys. Maybe I can have a free sample for you to try out next time.”

Humphrey didn’t respond. He made the appointment but put a reminder in his phone to cancel it. With luck, Shelly would never get around to making her dental tool toys. And if she did, he hoped she wouldn’t try contacting him about them. The one worry he did have, was about whether or not she’d make some prototypes and then just put them in her waiting room. A 3D print was a great way to make a cheap prototype, but most 3D printed materials were toxic if ingested, especially the resin ones. That gave him reason to pause.

I’ll send her some guidelines, he thought to himself. At least that way she won’t do anything too dangerous.

With that last thought, he got into his car and began to drive back to work. He had a whole case of new slimes to test out and he was looking forward to throwing them at different wall materials, grinding them into carpet squares, and seeing how easily they caught fire.