I had to read “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” my freshman year of high school and when I figured out who the “Nacirema” were, it blew my mind.

And even though I recognized that the point of the paper was to demonstrate that a biased outsider can make just about any culture sound alien and ridiculous, the vivid and frightening depiction of oral hygiene actually made me question the value of going to the dentist at all.

So when (at the behest of my mom) I finally saw a dentist the other day after a multi-year hiatus and he told me he would need **THREE** appointments with me just to fill all those cavities and deep-clean those gums, this paper came to mind.