I don’t want to be a whiner and complainer, but I’m going to whine and complain for a while. I’m losing my teeth! It’s 2010, for crying out loud, and not only do we not have flying cars and floating cities, we don’t have a way to re-grow bone below the gum line. My teeth are shifting and sliding like dancers in a slippery ballroom, or worse: two of the front ones on the bottom are gone. They just fell out, and the timing couldn‘t have been worse. I lost one while eating a banana. You read that right. I was enjoying a banana, a ripe banana, when one of my bottom teeth just wasn’t there anymore. And how lucky was I that I was on my way to a job interview in Myrtle Beach when that happened. I kept my right hand over my lower lip and mumbled through it.
And perhaps you teethy folk are wondering why I didn’t go to a dentist? I did. But since we were in South Carolina, I couldn‘t see my regular dentist. I visited the offices of Dr. Charles Goomey. The sign on his door proclaimed him a dentist/scientist. This is how that conversation went.
“You’ve got a lot of loose teeth in here,” he said.
“Yes, I know. One just fell out when I was eating a banana.”
“Was it a green banana?” he asked.
“No, it was ripe.”
“Did you swallow it?”
“No, I’ve still got it in this bag of ice chips.”
“You kept the banana?”
“No, I kept the tooth,” I said. “Can you put it back in by any chance?”
“Put it back?” he scoffed. “No, I can’t put it back. It’s not like re-attaching a head. The problem is that you’ve lost a lot of bone from your gums. Do you smoke?”
“I quit two years ago,” I said. “Did you just say you could re-attach a head?”
“Oh, did I say head? I meant finger,” he replied. “Well, we need to take out all these on the bottom. Yep, all five of them have to go. And this one in the back will have to go. Oh, and this one, too. Then we’ll send you off to get a partial head.”
“A partial head?” I gasped.
“Did I say head? I meant denture. Yes, a partial denture. You aren’t afraid of dentists, are you?”
“I wasn’t until now,” I said. “Listen, thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I want you to pull all my teeth just yet.”
“Oh,” he said. “Being from Connecticut, you probably want to keep your teeth for esthetic reasons.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said running for the door. I needed to get back home for a second, third and fourth opinion. Sadly, except for the re-attaching head parts, the dentists here gave me the same prognosis. I’m going to be getting dentures, as soon as I can afford them.
When we returned to Connecticut, I interviewed for a teaching position in Norwich, and this time I told the entire story of the banana and my missing tooth. They were very sympathetic, and noted that even with the missing tooth, I still had more teeth than most Tennesseans they had met. I thought that was uncalled for, but I really needed the position, because we didn’t want to relocate to South Carolina. I think I owe Dr. Goomey some money, and I don’t want to be part of any of his experiments. Besides, things could be worse.
My parents both lost their teeth early, so I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s happening to me. Besides, I still had all but one of my teeth on the bottom. I found I could chew around the loose teeth, so with some luck, I could make it until the first of the year when our insurance would kick in. But I didn’t consider the dangers of a cheese pizza.
I was working a bit of crust around my no-longer-all-that-pearly-whites when I noticed there was a new gap in my lower bicuspids. Another one bites the crust. This time, I think I did swallow it, which is more than a little creepy, but what’s past is to be passed. The next day, I had to face my students. One thing is certain: middle school students are as blunt about appearance as a cinder block. When I told them about my new missing tooth, I could hear some muffled giggles, some whispered names: gappy, shovel-mouth, inverted vampire, smilodon, (I was impressed by the last one).
I teach in a K-8 school, so when I took my class to lunch, I decided to seek the companionship of some of our younger students. Somehow, word of my loss had spread throughout the building.
“Mr. Hargrove?” asked Mariana, a third-grader. “Did you really lose a tooth?”
I opened wide and showed her. But she surprised me by flashing a smile of her own. She had gaps, too. So did Isaac, a first grader, and Lee Anna, a tiny fourth grader.
There we sat, just a lot of folks with missing teeth.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hargrove,” reassured Mariana. “My dentist said other teeth will come in to take their places. I’m sure you’ll get new teeth, too.”
I’m sure I will. The young kids even gave me some ideas for what to do with my missing teeth, ideas I had forgotten about long ago. I put the banana tooth under my pillow, and every morning I check to see if something is there. My wife said I needed to have my head examined. I think I need a whole new head. Or maybe just a partial one, and I know who to call to get it.
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On behalf of Southerners everywhere, can I just thank you for making our “toothless hillbilly” image issues even worse than they already were?
And on behalf of North Carolinians everywhere, can I thank you for dogging South Carolina and Tennessee instead of us?
Yes, especially that last part. Thank you. While you’re waiting on a permanent solution, by the way, they sell those cute little hillbilly teeth in convenience stores around here. Can I send you a set?