|
|
|
Sharron and I were having a great time at a party, when I bit into some ham and realized that something didn’t feel right. I ran my tongue across my teeth and then, discretely, jabbed at one of them with my finger. The tooth was half gone, leaving an over-exposed filling.
I got up from patio table and headed inside to the bathroom to check it out. On the way from the backyard into the kitchen, I was so intent upon feeling my tooth that I ran directly into the sliding glass door. Several party guests looked up. I glared around the room with an expression that said, “If anyone laughs, it’s not going to be pretty.” All the guests looked back down at their plates as if a young Clint Eastwood was standing there with a rifle in his hands, daring them to say another word. I shook my head and steadied myself. Sharron walked over to me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “I lost part of a tooth.” “From running into the door?” “Nooooo. Before then. When I was eating.” “Oh.” I pulled back the corner of my lip to show her. “Eew,” she said. With half a tooth gone, my usually suave, not-running-into-glass, James Bond look-alike persona was gone. It was replaced by my Billy-Bob’s-gone-a-huntin’ persona. “I reckon I better get to the dentist tomorrah,” I said. “Ah shucks,” Sharron replied. “Ain’t that the pits.” I called the dentist the following morning to tell him I needed a crown. I knew better than to diagnose my own condition, but I did it anyway. Doctors and their staff hate it when you diagnose. “Why don’t you come on down,” the secretary told me, “and we’ll tell you what you need.” I got there an hour later. Upon first look, the doctor said, “You need a crown.” “I need a crown,” I replied. “Yeah, you need a crown.” I was about to say, “I said it first,” when he went back into my mouth with his little mirror thingy. “I thaid it burst,” I said. “What?” “Never mind.” I had to return that afternoon to have the old filling drilled out and get the temporary crown fitted. The doctor filled the roof of my mouth with Novocain, and my normally suave playboy-of-the-world persona was immediately replaced with my drooling, elephant man persona. “Shanks a slot,” I said as I left the office an hour later. “Sthee ya schoon!” Two weeks passed before the crown was ready. When I returned to the dentist’s, I was excited about the prospect of having the staff shoot me full of another round of Novocain, pull out the temporary crown, and install the new one. I use the word “install” because, at that point, what they did was surprisingly like working on a car. They used pliers to get the old crown out, and when they tried to install the new one, they found that it was the wrong size. It was too small. They could get the crown fixed by sending it to the shop, but that meant I would have to return in several hours. That seemed better to me than waiting for several days. I figured, as long as they had the hood up… What I hadn’t counted on was that, after several hours, the Novocain had worn off, and they’d have to “fill ‘er up” again. By the time it was done, I looked like my childhood hamster with his mouth full of seeds. Except cuter. The tooth is fixed now, which is great, but now I have a new problem—an identity crisis. I’m not sure if I’m Clint Eastwood, James Bond, Redneck Billy Bob, a dentist impersonator, an international playboy, the Elephant Man, an old car, or a hamster. All I can say is, “This really bites.” |
 |