dentist, and a bit of time-binding

[redbird]

I was 10 or 11 the first time I took the subway to the dentist by myself, and had ice cream before getting on the subway home.

Today, I took the subway and 2 buses to the dentist, and stopped on the way home for ice cream. It was better ice cream, but ten-year-old redbird was quite happy with a Good Humor ice cream from the newsstand downstairs from the dentist's office. (The dentist gave his young patients gift certificates, redeemable from that shop.)

The trip to and from the dentist was a lot easier when I was ten, because it was one subway train, an easy walk from home at one end and the dentist's office at the other. (This was before New York City ran into financial problems, and cut way back on subway maintenance.)

Comments

[kareina]

When I was 10 my dentist said we should avoid eating sugary things--I can't imagine them giving us ice cream coupons. But then, there were no shops that sold ice cream in the area, either...

[redbird]

My hunch is that they thought an occasional ice cream wasn't going to make much difference. Looking back from many years later, I'm pretty sure the dentist cleared that small treat.reward for good behavior with parents, even those who sent their children to our dental appointments by ourselves.

The dentist's office was in an apartment building. The ground-floor retail in that building also included a newsstand/convenience store, a kind of shop whose existence I took for granted growing up in New York. It sold ice cream and other snacks, newspapers and magazines and I don't remember what else; a lot of their customers bought a newspaper there to read on the subway while commuting into the city. But he was handing out coupons for Good Humor bars, not hot fudge sundaes or root beer floats or large dishes of ice cream at wherever the nearest ice cream parlor was.

[kareina]

This is where I confess that I had never heard of Good Humor Bars before you posted this.

In hindsight, my single parent mother probably would have loved it it we could have gone to the dentist and other errands without her, but Anchorage is not set up for that. Now I wonder how they managed payment? Dentists are more expensive than the amount most parents would hand their kids in cash...

[redbird]

My guess is that either my parents were sending the dentist checks, or handing me a check made out to the dentist to give them during the appointment. But again, I don't remember. What I find myself thinking about these days is that it would be Weird in a lot of places today to send a child to the dentist by herself. But I also started taking the subway to school every day in seventh grade, a couple of months before my twelfth birthday, and the school gave us transit passes for the round trip to and from school (labeled for which stations you could use them at).