I would like to preface this story with a note that my teeth have never been great. I got a lot of cavities as a child. In part due to generally weak teeth and in part due to the fact that I ate sweets and really liked getting cavities filled because nitrous was awesome. Regardless of how often I brushed, however, my teeth were just weak. When I was wee, one of my baby teeth had to be pulled because it rotted. A “dead tooth” I think it was called. I had to have a procedure kind of like a root canal for baby teeth.
I think I just realized how gross that is. Back then it was in-depth oral surgery so I had a blast but now I realize…huh, rotten teeth are gross. I brush my damn teeth, I promise. I did then and I do now. Now I just have fewer of them to do…
In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college one of my teeth fell apart. I can’t remember if I had chipped it or cracked it or what but it, yeah, fell apart. I was upstairs in the breakroom at work, eating frozen yogurt not usually known for its tooth-shattering abilities when my tooth crumbled in my mouth and I bit a fragment of my own tooth, which is quite jarring to do by the way. Your teeth meet all the time, but you don’t typically get tooth caught between teeth. It’s uncomfortable. I soon went to the dentist and he put some sort of temporary crown on it to bide time before my inevitable root canal that awaited me. Hooray! Sometime during sophomore year that crown fell apart and there was little left of my #2 upper right molar and it was time I finally met my root canal, who had been waiting for me impatiently.
Fast forward eight years. Now-Husband and I went with some friends to their parents’ lake property to spend the day on the water and the evening by the fire and/or beer pong table. That day I made the decision that because I could wakeboard 8 years prior, I could totally master the activity again or at least be able to stand up. Turns out, I could do neither. I, could, however, let go of the rope really fast and not get dragged behind the boat, which is an incredibly usefull skill to have for someone learning water sports. I learned the importance of this after watching The Great Outdoors a few hundred times. Anyway, I had tried a few times and really only succeeded at moving quickly from a sitting position to a supine position on the water in a jerky arch-like motion. I decided to give it one last go and it was on this last attempt at being an awesome wakeboarder that I was able to get up out of the water and stand up on the board. It was exciting. For split seconds the wind was in my hair and I was being pulled awkwardly behind the boat. Since you begin wakeboarding with the board turned sideways, I attempted to let the board turn to face the correct direction, but I could not possibly have executed that move any worse and I fell. Hard. I smacked the water with my face before any other part of my body hit. I’m not exactly sure how my eyes stayed on. When I was finally able to right myself, I called the day done and managed to get back to the boat using whatever the submerged marine version of limping would be. Once on the boat, I realized that my head had smacked the water so hard, I lost all 6 of my earrings and my elastic headband. I get back to shore and realize I will never be a cool wakeboarder. Funny stories are told and it appears the wakeboarding incident is forgotten.
Later on in the evening, we’re sitting around the fire and I’m doing nothing laughing. Not eating dinner. Not chewing gum. Not even having silky-smooth yet somehow treacherously tooth-shattering frozen yogurt. Not even talking. Yet there I was, listening to whoever was speaking when I felt something hit my tongue. I reached in and pulled out my molar. I looked at Now-Husband and said astoundedly (it’s a word), “My tooth just fell out.” At first his face showed mild humor and confusion because surely those weren’t the actual words that had come out of my mouth. Alas, he realized I had indeed actually spoken the words “My tooth just fell out” and his face quickly turned to reflect an obvious feeling of horror as I showed him the tooth that seconds before was in my head. It wasn’t broken. It wasn’t a piece of tooth. It was a tooth. I had a tooth in my hand and a hole in my head. He soon found himself in the extremely uncomfortable position of wanting to laugh at me but also being totally humiliated that this overweight but okay chick he had brought with him was actually a back-woods bumpkin who can’t even keep her teeth in her head. It was as though in his view I was suddenly sporting flip-flops that were too thin to contain my breadloaf-like feet while donning a camoflage hat that held my frizzy hair in a ponytail to keep it out of my face while I spit into a bottle and talked about my cabin in the holler that didn't have a working well but was overrun by numerous goats and chickens.
A few months later, horrified Now-Husband got to be the one to drive me to my surgery to get the hole cleaned out and the remnants of the root canal removed before setting an appointment for an implant. He thoroughly enjoyed getting to see me completely out of it on whatever they gave me to put me to sleep. He had quite a laugh calling my mother to tell her everything was okay while I bobbed about in the passenger seat absolutely certain that I was making total sense but not knowing why he found my completely rational statements to be hilarious. Apparently what I said and what he heard were different but whatever. He had a lot of fun with it until later on when I was sober and could tell him the harsh reality: there would be no implant. The oral surgeon said he didn’t often put dental implants there for tooth #2 because there’s really no need and it’s a waste of money. He would if it was tooth #3 or more but since you can’t really see tooth #2 anyway, I was getting no implant. Realization set in and the look of horror and confusion returned. Now-Husband does, in fact, have a Now-Wife who is a back-woods bumpkin who can’t keep her teeth in her head. I’m actually missing a tooth because it fell out of my head while I was engaging in the strenuous activity of laughter. It didn’t fall out when I face-planted on the water and lost everything that wasn't anatomically connected to my head. No, no. It was the act of sitting around a fire and doing absolutely nothing that ensured my full set of teeth's demise.
And no, that tooth is not the same tooth as the baby tooth that rotted and “died.” That permanent replacement is holding strong, for now anyway.
I would really like to have those goats.
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