The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Brushed Right Past Kathy Hilton's Past Life as a Practicing Child Dentist

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills premiere Wednesday night was everything and nothing I expected it to be: For one, there were no dramatic flash-forwards to Erika Jayne’s ongoing legal battles against those orphans and widows, contrary to previous seasons which front-loaded premieres with heavy-handed inserts of “what’s to come.” It makes me think producers might have an actually good season on their hands—especially if Kathy Hilton keeps telling stories about torturing children with fake dental supplies.

Yes, you read that correctly. Kathy Hilton, mom of Paris, sister to the iconic Kyle and Kim Richards, said she once tortured little children with fake dental supplies when she and her sisters were just girls. In fact, she told the story proudly, laughing and joking about the fear in the eyes as she went down on them with the “walnut pick.” At a dinner party, she even asked if she could bring her “scissors and dental supplies” on vacation with the cast, eliciting loud guffaws from every Real Housewife in attendance.

But did they laugh out of mirth or sheer terror?

Here’s Kathy’s story in full:

“I’ve always liked to play games and when I was little I would gather all the children in the neighborhood to come over and… I would do dental work on them. You know, Kim and Kyle would be my little assistants, and I would say ‘WALNUT PICK!’ and Kyle would hand it to me. And the kids would be like “No! No! I don’t want to do that!!” I’m like: “If you want to come back here and play, you’re going to let me do this.”

As she says solemnly after reciting her past life as a child dentist, “I was a character.” Um… that’s certainly one way to explain the horrors she described on national television.

I’m more curious about the total non-reaction her second re-telling of this story at a party elicited from her new castmates. She told it, they laughed, and then nobody ever mentioned it again. Then 20 more minutes went by as if everything was completely normal. I had to actually go back and listen to it a few more times, just to be sure I hadn’t invented the story after a few too many edibles.

These rich women must hear a bucketload of genuinely wild personal confessions, simply from living in Beverly Hills and also being famous. They gave the same treatment to Denise Richards’s outburst at a similar dinner party that she and her husband were going to be assassinated by Big Pharma because he’d discovered the cure to cancer… or something. A year later and I still can’t make sense of what she said that night.

It remains to be seen, then, if Kathy will indeed bring her dental supplies on their little girl’s trip the group has planned. I’d love to finally get some answers about how she used the walnut pick.