the straight tooth

Once upon a time, when I was 4 years old, I tripped on our neighbor's stoop and killed my front tooth. I was also a fiercely addicted thumb-sucker. These two actions resulted in this:

shut up. it was 1976.

When I turned 12 my parents took me to an orthodontist, who promptly rubbed his hands together with glee and insisted on immediate treatment. When we left his office he called his wife and told her to book a 2-week vacation to Hawaii, sponsored by my father. I wore retainers of every imaginable shape and kind--and spent several hours digging through cafeteria garbage bins looking for those damn retainers.

By age 15 I had a straight, dazzling smile, reminiscent of this:

People often asked if I was a first cousin, I had that kind of smile.

My 16th summer I rode my bike to the public library on a drizzly morning. Next thing I knew, I woke up on a gurney in an ambulance with a searing pain across my face. Two of my Cost an Arm and a Leg to Straighten front teeth were gone. Another tooth was dead. The right side of my face looked like ground chuck, my right eyebrow was missing, I had a concussion and a skinned knee. I never knew what my bike looked like because in a weird stroke of fortune, a bike repairman happened upon the scene of my accident and took my bike home to fix it for me.

After my 3-night hospital stay, we met a dentist and an oral surgeon (who also called their wives who then called travel agents). I got to have a root canal, false teeth and crowns. While in college the bridge came undone and I had to get another one installed. So far that bridge has stayed put quite nicely. I've little doubt that my father was furious at buying me replacement teeth paying an orthodontist to straighten my original set.

Sometimes people accuse me of having a fake smile. I find that fact hard to dispute.

Posted in: Flashback Friday