dave’s killer bread and once again peanut butter

last week was bad at the office. and if you asked me what makes a day good or bad for a dentist like me, it’s the patients. that’s why i like being a dentist and i can’t let go of it entirely yet. the fact that days are unpredictable, dynamic, and diverse because the people walking into the office can be ethereally sweet, quirky, genius-level intelligent, kind, but also possibly rude, condescending, distrustful, and disrespectful. this is what i love about dentistry. that the moment i walk into the office, i can count on a different day than yesterday. that’s only if i put in the effort to get to know my patients. there were days where i stopped caring, in the overload of paperwork and phone calls. And then every day was a miserable blur.

anyways last week was bad. none of my friends or acquaintances understand when i tell them that some of my patients are super rude to me. that’s because the people around me inevitably have a normal range of manners because i get to choose my friends and acquaintances. but when you have a public-facing job, you encounter the outliers of people who in fact, are okay with yelling at, irritating, or being snarky and demanding to their…dentist. and these outliers like to come in waves. all in one day. like they coordinated it. so on Friday I was hit with a wave of just strange people who, appointment after appointment, was draining the life out of me.

and then a man walked in with some pain. and he was kind, he was gentle, and he was normal. and what i try to do on these days, is I really extend my conversations with the nice people, hold onto the good moments and stories of the day to get me through. he came in as an emergency because one side of his mouth had some discomfort when he ate his favorite bread. so i honed in on finding the problem tooth for him, diagnosed and treated it. As he left one of the advice i gave was him to give the right side a break from hard foods, maybe from the grainy bread, for a day or two. and he looked at me so sad and said, really? the bread? and i said yeah, just 24 hours. he goes, aw man. i- i don’t know if i can do that. of course he was half joking and i got intrigued, so i asked him why not? it’s just a day. he goes I eat this bread three times a day. it’s my favorite bread. it’s just so good.

i’ve never seen anybody talk about store bought bread like this. i asked him where do you get this bread? what brand? he said well it’s called dave’s killer bread. have you heard? they have it in specialty stores like fairway. and he started to tell me the story behind the bread company. how this guy dave, was a felon, and when he got out of prison, his brother wanted him to have a second chance in life. so he gave his brother a job at the bakery. it grew into a business, and it now operates as a company that hires people like him, when they get out of prison hoping to have a second chance in life. i said well that’s amazing. (as i was trying to latch onto this good moment and good story). and my patient, for a moment, goes somewhere else, and mutters- yeah and this bread and some peanut butter. o my god. just thinking about it drives me nuts. you can’t have it with just any peanut butter either. you gotta have it with this brand called once again peanut butter.

once again peanut butter? yeah. they do this thing, where i think where their company is employee owned. and on the jar there’s a raccoon, and the story is that when they started the factory, there were these hungry raccoons, and they fed them peanut butter. and it became their pet and now it’s a mascot for them. you gotta get their crunchy one, you know. and put it on the bread.. and o my god. he rolled his eyes back.

for a sec i could see him sitting at his dining table, eating the bread, and reading every single word on the bread bag and the peanut butter jar, day after day after day. he’s had it so many times, read the label so many times, that he could recite the stories by heart. i said you read the jar too many times, didn’t’ you. we laughed. i said have a great day. try to give it a break for a day. and hope you can enjoy the bread. hope we don’t hear from you again. he left happy.

and the next few patients continued to be assholes to me. but the rest of the day i held onto those two words. daves’ killer bread and once again peanut butter. i don’t know if i’ll actually find the bread and buy it. also i already have a jar of peanut butter that will take forever for me to finish on my own. but one day, when i do come across dave’s killer bread, or once again peanut butter, i’ll think of my patient. you know? and how every other nasty patient was a blur, but him and his story got me through the day.