Dear Hearts and Gentle People

You know, when God invented teeth I don’t think He had any idea how much trouble they would cause. If he had he would have made them out of titanium or something and He would have made them to stay in your mouth for eternity.

But He didn’t and because of that dentists have lucrative careers and we spend half our time flossing and brushing.

Ever wonder about George Washington’s so-called wooden teeth? How did he acquire them? Did all of his rot out and since he was on a lowly president’s salary, did he replace them with whittled down tree limbs? It’s just a thought. I’m too lazy to look it up.

I’m more concerned with talking about the teeth that come already installed in our heads when we are born. Excuse me, but like I said, I’m not so sure God spent a lot of time on them. In other words, why do some of them grow in crooked, offcenter or, like mine, with one in the roof of my mouth?

I’m not kidding. My sister had a whole extra set! We’re just a toothy family, I guess. Umm. Toothy or mouthy? Oh well, one of those.

Both of my sons were born with fine healthy teeth and until we discovered that one of them (when he was in Junior High) also had “too many” teeth, neither of them had ever had so much as a cavity.

Yes, too many teeth, so a few had to be removed so others could grow in correctly. After that, like so many, we were forced to invest in what kids now think are the coolest things ever. (They even come in different colors!) Braces.

Braces are not cheap now, nor have they ever been. My son wore them for four years and wore a retainer (the last step before removal of the braces) for two.

He ended up with beautiful straight shiny white teeth, but not without a great deal of turmoil.

I can’t count the number of times I have been summoned to Valdosta Junior High’s lunchroom to help look for the napkin that my son put his retainer on while he ate and then promptly threw in the trashcan.

I can’t tell you the number of times we were almost to Wrens when we were forced to ride all the way back to Hardees in Thomson to, you guessed it, fish the retainer out of the trashcan.

I drew the line though, the day the school called and said, “Mrs. McGee, could you come over and see if you can locate Wilbur’s (not his real name) retainer and I got there and the lunchroom ladies pointed to the Dipsy Dumpster.

Uh uh. No way. I was not crawling inside that vat full of slick and slimy lunchroom trays and feel my way around snotty napkins and occasional throw-up to find any retainer! I didn’t care how much it cost; it was over, his teeth were done.

Luckily, the orthodontist assured me that Wilbur had only a few more weeks anyway to wear the retainer so all was well – until we moved to Lincolnton four years later.

That is when Wilbur and his friend decided to go ice-skating in Augusta one Sunday afternoon. My, how it still pains me to say this – Wilbur came home sans his two front teeth. Not just loose, mind you, but OUT, GONE, KAPUT, staring up at me from his hand.

A rush to the endodontist (dentists have different names, and fees, depending on the severity of the dental issue at hand, and this one was a Code Red.)

The good news is, Wilbur had two brand new teeth implanted into his gums.

The bad news, we just finished paying for them last month.

Listen dear hearts. My daddy was right when he often admonished my sister and me to “take good care of your teeth!”

“I don’t care if you have but one tooth in your head,” he said, “take care of it and don’t lose it!”

I have done my best to take his advice but at 60 plus years one just naturally gets a “little long in the tooth,” as the saying goes, so I sport a few crowns in my mouth and more canals than Venice. But, doggonned it, they’re still mine.

Speaking of crowns, a friend of mine recently had the misfortune of swallowing hers while sitting in the dentist’s chair. Crowns, by the way, are going for about $2,000 apiece now so she was not a happy patient nor he a happy dentist.

Now, what to do when one swallows a tooth? Does one just forget about it? A $2,000 crown? My friend didn’t think so and neither did her dentist. She would just go home and wait until nature took its course and the tooth made its exit south.

Bless her heart, she waited and waited, and is still waiting as far as I know, confident everything will come out all right (no pun intended). I’m told her church sang the closing hymn in her honor yesterday….Pass It On. I hope it works.

It should make her feel better to know, however, that just this past week, in Jericho in Antioquia, Colombia, a woman swallowed a toothbrush and required emergency endoscopic surgery. The paper reported, “The woman was not able to explain how she was able to swallow the object and whether it was because of an accident or stupidity.”

It added, “It is not the first time a woman has swallowed a toothbrush. A 26-year old woman from Sweden reportedly did it before the Jericho resident.”

Dang.

In a similar vein, my next-door neighbor’s four-year old son, in Montgomery, Alabama, swallowed a quarter before Christmas (he found it under the couch). It was big enough that the doctor was concerned and sent them for x-rays every week to make sure it was moving along.

When, after four weeks, it had not surfaced my neighbor’s husband suggested they swipe an ATM card between his rear end cheeks to get the money out.

Men are always such smart alecks.