Mr. and Mrs. Dentist are not dentists. Mr. and Mrs. Dentist dig holes in their back yard. They feel better when they are digging, so they dig. Mr. and Mrs. Dentist have problems. They also have perfect teeth and smiles like cupcakes, so the world doesn’t take their problems seriously. The Dentists want to live serious, adult lives. They want to shed the feeling that they aren’t meeting expectations. They want to be in on the joke, but the world just laughs and returns their smile and their problems are reflected back to them and amplified like a flash bouncing off a perfect tooth or moonlight echoing off the wall of a well-dug hole. And so they continue digging. Mr. and Mrs. Dentist dig because it is the opposite of being buried. They dig to find bottom. They dig because a hole has no bottom until the digging stops. They dig on winter nights after long days in the world. They pick and scrape and chip at the frozen ground, working carefully around rocks, shoveling out cold bricks of dirt. They peel off their clothes until pale steam rises from their skin. They dig deeper until their bodies sweat and breathe. Until they feel better. Until their holes are shoulder deep and only their naked heads are above ground. Two misshapen molars ready to be pulled from the world.
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