This is a non-work-related story. You see, I'm a bad patient. Before last month, I hadn't been to the dentist since my sophomore year of high school...

My two top front teeth were both chipped - one from an accident with a swingset chain when I was ten or twelve, one from a lifetime of bad habits. And one of the lower ones had suffered a run-in with a bottlecap a while back. And I guess I'd always just resigned myself to living with this crooked little jag in my smile.
I went to the dentist last month. He poked around in my mouth and cleaned off ten years' worth of accumulated ick, and complimented me on how little ick that was. And then he said "We can fix that old cap for you, and the tooth next to it."
It was like a little light going on. And I didn't actually care how much it would cost me to get it done, but the price wasn't that bad, and now here I am with three newly-normalized teeth and I didn't realize how much exactly that would mean to me.

I feel like a different person.