No one likes to go to the dentist.

Some of us don’t mind it as much as we mind going to get a haircut (Exhibit A of this type of personality is atop my head) but after you graduate from high school and it’s no longer one of the few acceptable reasons to miss class, the trip to the dentist becomes even more horrible.

Gone are the days when you just feared the tools, the drills, the scrapey thing, the bad-tasting tooth polish and the bloody gums that come from not flossing as much as you should.

Now, at least for me, it’s more mental.

I walk in and know that I didn’t floss enough, so I know it’s going to hurt, but this I’m OK with. What I don’t like is having to explain to this adult why I suck at life so much that I can’t drag dental tape through my teeth once daily, even when plaque has bad breath, early onset gingivitis and cavity implications.

I just can’t explain it. It’s like a teacher whose class I take twice a year and each time they shake their head at me like they’re disappointed, but they pass me anyway, hoping that one of these days I’ll get it.

But that wasn’t it today. No, not even when I had to call my insurance to get them to verify that, yes, my parents’ insurance covers me until the end of the day Oct. 31, regardless of what the automated voice told the receptionist.

That’s because the receptionist was dressed as Cleopatra.

Answering the other phone was a vampire and Thing 1 and Thing 2 were running around the office, too.

Alice (Of Wonderland fame) called me to the back and I also saw a French maid wandering around the office.

And while the dentist and dental assistant who performed my fillings didn’t dress up (Apparently there was an office-wide theme that fell through late) I was still in way better spirits than I would have been had plainclothes receptionists and assistants led me to the dental chair.

Yes, the office itself looks like a torture chamber, but think about how awesome it is to go see a man in a white coat who drills you on Halloween while surrounded by costumed assistants and children dressed as skeletons.

Yes, haunted houses are scary, but I ASKED someone to drill a hole in my teeth today. In fact, I paid for it. And it hurt and it was scary and the laughing gas made me wonder if the guy was even a doctor at one point, but sometimes that’s the point of Halloween.

And having the .0001 percent chance of something going wrong, well that’s terror if ever I can imagine it.

So next year when you’re looking at scheduling your cleaning or some sort of dental work, don’t discount the beauty of Halloween. It’s one of the few holidays that we work through, and if your dentist has a healthy bunch of pediatrics patients, there’s a good chance they’ll be working extra hard to put you at ease with costumes.

And you have to get it done anyway, right?