At the dentist

Sometimes you overhear neighboring conversations that are absolutely more interesting than the one you are in. While I was getting my teeth cleaned another patient was talking about his job at the local funeral home in town. Luckily the hygienist cleaning my teeth tuned into the other conversation too. Both of us were completely silent. The man was trying to quell this woman's fears that bodies sit up during the cremation process due to the tissue's reaction to the heat. She had heard from someone who handled pet cremations that the pet's bodies writhed in the hot temperatures of the crematorium. The man from the funeral home wasn't positive but he said that bodies looked as if they came out in the same position as they went in. He said you can somewhat see a skeletal figure of ash when they are removed from the furnace. Any recognizable shape completely collapses after it is touched. They then use a broom to collect all the ashes into a bin. Then they use a large magnet to remove any metal remains from the ashes. Next they put the ashes in an industrial sized blender to create a nice consistency to the ashes before they return them to the loved ones. He also said that the gas bills at the funeral home were incredibly high. At this point the hygienist turned on the electric tooth polisher to clean my teeth so neither of us could hear. I did catch the man saying after all his experiences at the funeral home he would much rather be cremated than buried. Overall a morbid but effective distraction from sitting in a dentist chair.