As you get older, you become less able to show this kind of fear. It's fine to throw a huge tanty when you're under 10, or to make your body rigid so that no one can get you sat in the dentist's chair, while the hygienist tries to wade through the tears and snotters. Not really acceptable behaviour in an adult, though. Or so my dentist told me the last time I visited.

Mine is not an unfounded, irrational fear. Like so many things in my life, a 'responsible adult' is to blame. I used to trip along to the dentist quite happily. All that would change when our dentist decided that braces would be the very dab. To accommodate the wiring, I would have to have a tooth out. I was, thankfully, to be put under for the whole procedure.

All proper preparations were made. Mother had looked out a voluminous and especially itchy scarf to wrap me in on the way home. Scratchy wool being the first line of defence against infection. Everything was very calm and relaxed at the surgery. I suspected – even at that tender age – that the dental staff had been at the gas earlier in the morning. I was told to just lie quietly and count down from 10. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, si..." And that was it.

I woke up in the nurse's office about 40 minutes later. After a further 10 minutes of the nurse and Mother having a good laugh at me staggering around the room and bumping into the furniture, it was determined that I was fine to walk home. I was duly enveloped in the rasping scarf. Mother, being lively to the possibility of germs in the air, made sure that none of it could get near me by tying the scarf tight around my mouth and nose.

We could only have gone about 10 yards when I worked out that something was wrong. "Wng oof," I said. "Please speak properly. How am I meant to understand you if you don't enunciate, lady?" I think I could have been cut some slack, given that all my airways were blocked with Angora. 'WNG OOF!'

Mother whipped that scarf from me so quickly that I was left with first degree burns on my neck. Seizing either side of my jaw, she opened it as wide as she possibly could. To drivers going past, it must have looked like an impromptu audition for Billy Smart's circus. After a good few minutes investigation, she finally allowed that I was right. They had indeed taken out the wrong tooth.

Nowadays, we would return to the dentists accompanied by lawyers, counsellors and risk assessors. All Mother did was march me smartly back in and demand that they took out the right tooth there and then. Which they did. 'Ten, nine, eig...'

All of this will go some way to explaining to my current dentist why I generally smell of brandy (it's the Rescue Remedy, honestly), leave a pool of sweat on her chair and sit digging my nails into my palms. It's nothing personal – but I hate you.