"my teeth, dripping at my gums"

Just got back from the dentist's office here and so I thought a good topic today would be comparing and contrasting the Dentist Experience hér á klakanum with that in the US. In a well-written essay, of course. Or a well-written series of bullet points:

Things that are the same:

• The same tray of scary picks and axes, laid out with color-coded handles.
• Easy-listening music on the intercom. Apparently, this is necessary for good dental hygeine the world over. In Boston, it used to be WSSH, turned down to barely-audible volumes. Here it's Létt Bylgjan (the Light Wave) 96.9 FM. Smooth...

Things that are different:

• Like all medical facilities (and homes too, visitors!) in Iceland you have to take off your shoes at the dentist's door. Or cover them with blue plastic bags, which are piled in a big bin. Under no circumstances can you walk directly on the pristine floors of the dental facility in your street shoes.
• Everything is computerized. All patient records, observations, future appointments, and billing info are in a seat-side computer. Even the X-rays go straight into the computer as JPEGs, real-time.
  
• Everyone who works in my Icelandic dentist office is female. This encompasses 3 or 4 dentists and countless hygeinists. Furthermore, they mostly seem to be under 30 and cute as hell.
• They never let you rinse in Iceland. Rinsing is a luxury to be indulged only at the very end of 45 minutes of scraping, polishing, and flossing. Sometimes they use the vacuum to keep things from getting completely sloshy in there.
• American dentists never seemed to compliment me on how good my Icelandic was. But I guess it wasn't all that good back then anyway.