The first time my front tooth died was in tenth grade, when Richard Jones, the center on our football team, went up against me in gym class for a rebound. His elbows spread out like in a football block and the left one nailed me. I went up in the air for a couple of seconds--I weighed 150 then and stood 6 foot 3, so I was easily airborne. By the time I came down the tooth was dead, the nerve crushed by the fulcrum of his leap. It turned black in about a day and the dentist said I needed a crown, which would involve drilling my tooth out, implanting a metal post, and creating a ceramic "cap" replica of what had been there before. As I write this, the tooth pulses, even though the nerve has been "dead" for fifty years.
That cap worked thru college. When I came to New York, I played squash a lot with my college roommate. He's more of a tennis player--tennis being an arm game and squash a wrist game, essentially. On Valentine's Day after work he nicked me with a follow thru, just the merest touch of his racket on my tooth--I'm a mouth breather because of my broken nose--and the impact popped the back of the cap off, although the front remained intact and in place for about five seconds, when it fell on the white painted wooden floor of the squash court and fragmented. When I went home I rang the doorbell instead of using my key, so I could see my wife's face when I said "Be My Valentine" with no front tooth.
Possibly there is something about holidays, because the next time was a Fourth of July barbecue I was hosting while I house-sat for the firm's senior partner--a little like a kid having a party when the parents are away. I was playing Frisbee on the long grassy lawn alongside the brook and in front of the rose garden and the party was going great and the beer and the wine were flowing--get it? So in this ambrosial setting the idea of a one fingered catch of the Frisbee became essential. Essentially what happened was that it flipped off my finger and zinged me in--now you get it for sure--a certain exposed spot.
Finally, at least so far, came the Christmas when my daughter was three. I was sitting on the floor amidst the unwrappings when she came running at me, total eye contact and Marilyn Monroe smile. I opened my arms to catch her and she tripped on the rug. In front of her, stretched out like a payload in her missile, sat a book with heavy reinforced cardboard pages, of exactly the type you would give only to a small child. I fished the tooth out from my lower lip. Front intact--pressure fracture in the back.
In two hours we were due a hundred miles away for dinner at my wife's sister's. I shoved the tooth back in and kept opening presents, eating cookies, and tamping it further back in with my tongue. I sat up on the couch to collect up some paper and boxes and sneezed. The whole room was full of unwrapped presents and their former adornments. My throat felt like I might have swallowed it, at least that's what my head told me. Twenty extra long minutes later I found it and headed off to the dentist who covers for my guy when he's away. So only two hours later than planned, we sat down for Christmas dinner and drank a toast to family and resilience and to Richard Jones for his ultimately humorous elbow.
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Page created: November 1, 2009