What would you do if someone in a pastel-colored tunic stopped you on the street and said, “Just sit on this bench for a minute while I stuff your mouth full of sharp, pointy instruments. And just ignore the fact that one sounds like a buzz saw.”

What would you do? Run in terror? Flee for your life?

Yet, it’s hard to believe we willingly enter into these circumstances on a regular basis. We do it indoors. In fact, we call it “going to the dentist.”

I have known many dentists who are fine, cheerful, kind men and women. We call one another by our first names. Yet, when I walk through that door or passage and fumble my way into the chair — because I have closed my eyes — a cold perspiration bespangles my brow.

Like most, I first went to the dentist as a child and the memory is clear. I even recall his name — which will remain unsaid in case he is still out there.

“Just a couple of small cavities,” he said. “No freezing needed. It will only take a minute.” Then, he fired up his pedal-operated drill, shifted into Roto-Rooter mode and rampaged around in my mouth.

Since that day, I have been traumatized. As a teenager, I avoided the dentist all through high school and ended up with a handful of cavity-weakened molars. More trauma.

And yet, no pain. Fear, yes; pain, no.

The fear is strong enough that while I can describe a dental receptionist, I have no idea what the hygienist looks like. You know, the one with the soothing voice and the tray of knives. That’s because I keep my eyes shut tight.

I don’t see the implements and often I don’t see the dentist him- or herself, although I have rough idea that all dentists now wear face shields or hockey helmets. Anyway, some kind of protective gear.

Perhaps the chief cause of any fear of dentistry is the insistent whine of the drill. The good news on this front is that a British dentist has invented a device that masks drill noise. Presumably, no whine means less cringing in the chair.

Of course, there are other factors for those like me, craven cowards. For example, one fear is that while the dentist is pushing down on one of those instruments, it will slip off the tooth, slice through your cheek and impale you on the arm of the chair. A rational fear? Absolutely not. No way. Impossible. Unheard of.

Yet, it’s my fear. And there is nothing I can do about it.

Then, there’s the dental hammer — or what I believe is a hammer because, with my eyes shut tight, I never see it. In my memory, the dentist takes the hammer and bangs away on your teeth. All the while, saying, “Tell me if there is any pain.”

I grunt out a no, but it’s unlikely I would admit to pain at this stage. I just want to go home and dream of my grandmother, who kept her teeth in a jar beside her bed. I thought then that false teeth were the perfect solution — and so what if you couldn’t eat corn on the cob? My father also had several sets of false teeth, and I was hoping they ran in the family. I was wrong.

And so I faithfully turn up at the dentist and sit in the chair and grip the arms so tightly that after a couple of visits I have worn ruts. I usually get one respite from the poking, prying and drilling — that’s when they take the X-rays. And, with new technology, they can show me in seconds what all those tombstones look like stuck in my jaw. It is a supremely humbling experience. But it beats drilling.

There is one other humbling experience that a visit to the dentist resembles — and to visualize it, you have to move from one end of the body to the other. Consider for a moment the sigmoidoscope, an instrument with a headlight on it that your proctologist feeds into your intestine or some other place that’s deep inside.

At some stage, he will hand you an eyepiece and urge you to have a look at whatever it is back there by the hole where your appendix used to be. And as you ponder your mortality, you will have a brief and astonishing moment when it occurs to you that you would rather be at the dentist. IE