After a year of holding together a long-distance relationship while I finished my degree back in Michigan, I planned to move to Washington DC to join my boyfriend. I applied to dental hygiene jobs in the area and after a short email exchange, one potential employer bought me a plane ticket to come for an interview. (He asked for a photo of me during that email exchange. That was weird, right?) In one disorienting day, I was to fly to DCA, take a taxi to the office for a visit and fly back to Detroit Metro. My family was impressed. I was a little scared that I'd become a victim of human trafficking.

I moved to Washington DC with no more knowledge of what went on there than I learned in twelfth grade U.S. Government class. The dental office was on K Street, which was known as a general location for lobbying and law firms. I didn't know what a lobbyist was, I just knew that most of my patients seemed to be self-important jerks who had zero respect for a twenty-two year old Midwestern dental hygienist.

The dentist who owned the practice, Dr. Jacob, was a sixty-something man originally from New York City. He was tall and loud, with an office full of certificates and photos of himself with various celebrities and political figures. When we met, I used the back of my hand as a map of Michigan to point out various locations he'd asked about, such as Ann Arbor, where I'd just moved from, Big Rapids, where I'd gone to dental hygiene school and my hometown.

"That is wonderful!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands together.

Sometimes he'd say to patients at the end of their appointments, "Did she show you where she's from? No? Anna, do the thing! The hand thing." I'd hold my hand up and point somewhere between the two knuckles on my thumb. "And you know what? They call that place 'The Thumb!'" Usually the patients were checking their watches by then, unimpressed. "And her accent! Wow!"

I felt like a sideshow act: Clueless Midwestern Girl With a Map for a Hand Who Doesn't Even Know What a Lobbyist Is.

So I played up the act, mostly for a break in the boredom that came with scraping at teeth all day. I really turned on the folksy idiocy when my patients explained what their jobs entailed.

I'd ask all my patients, "So, where do you work?" At the time I didn't know that it was the most tedious and common question that everyone in DC who thought they were someone couldn't wait to answer. Growing up in Michigan, I hardly knew anyone who didn't work in healthcare or the automotive or service industries. So I did think it was interesting to learn about what all my patients in their navy blue suit jackets and khakis were doing all day on their Blackberries, but I tried not to let them know that.

One day, a prominent political strategist completely ignored me during his entire appointment. I tried to tell him he had advanced periodontal disease and if left untreated he'd likely lose all his teeth and he grunted in response, without lifting his eyes from his newspaper.

When I went to get Dr. Jacob to come do the exam, I said, "He has pretty bad perio. He needs scaling and root planing."

"Rupert Snotsweather* doesn't have time for scaling and root planing! He has a campaign to win!"

"Okay, but can you come and tell him his teeth are gonna fall out, because he won't listen to me."

Dr. Jacob shrugged emphatically. "Eh! He probably won't even notice his teeth falling out."

When we walked back into the room, Mr. Snotsweather had one Blackberry about five inches from his face, another one up to his ear, a pen in his mouth and a notebook in his lap. Dr. Jacob was probably right.

I met a Congressman, a former NFL player (nicest patient I had there), a White House Correspondent, and several others who I discovered had Wikipedia pages after I had my hands in their mouths for an hour.

But my favorite K Street dental story is about the guy I could see on television on a daily basis now, if I cared to get sucked into the 24 hour news cycle again.

He wore a khaki trench, shiny shoes and a bored expression. Classic.

I initiated the usual small talk while taking x-rays.

"So, where do you work?"

"ABC News."

"Bite." He bit down on the x-ray holder while holding his Blackberry up in front of his face. Click. "What do you do there?" I asked as I pulled the x-ray out from his admittedly very nice teeth: big but not too big, healthy, and not artificially whitened and flashy.

"Reporter."

"Bite." Click. "So do you write the stories they read on TV or-"

"I'm an on air reporter."

"Oh, neat. Bite." Click. "I'm new to the area, and I haven't really watched the local news much so far."

"It's national," he explained, his voice just loaded with disdain, "so it wouldn't matter if you're new to the area."

"Whoops. Okay then." I positioned the x-ray between his teeth again and said, "I mostly watch CNN anyway. Bite." Then he actually tore his eyes away from his phone, made eye contact with me and I smirked behind my mask. Click.

I took a look at his chart again and asked him if reporter's names are real or fake, "Because your name sounds fake, but it's right here on your chart. So unless your whole identity is fake..."

He ignored me and typed away on the tiny keyboard, so I leaned his chair back and started picking at his teeth.

"Most of them are real," he said a couple of minutes later, as he finally shoved his phone in his pocket. Is he talking about his teeth? I wondered. Dude, I can tell they're real. "The names. Some of them are fake, but most of them are real."

*Rupert Snotsweather is a fake name. I made up so many names, Googled them, and found out they were real names. So Snotsweather it is.