My Friends, My Teeth

Four days ago, I paid a long over-due visit to the dentist. Two years ago, the same dentist pulled four other teeth, two on each side just behind the four recent victims. This time. It was my front four teeth that were not salvageable, and she pulled them. Two weeks ago, I turned forty six years old. For some reason, forty-six was a much harder birthday to face than any I’ve faced in the past. I have had a vague sense that it’s now too late. Too late to ever achieve certain dreams. Everything I’ve achieved up to now is all I’ll ever achieve. Not enough time to do so many thing I thought I’d already have done.

Those eight teeth were my smile for three decades. Every picture I have they were there. On the deck of the Cutty Sark, on the tree on the River Avon, by the river in Leningrad, they were with me. My first kiss, they were there. The first time I kissed my wife, they were there.  They ate Chicken Kiev in Kiev and drank Russian Vodka five years before they were legal. They ate countless plates of Mozzarella Sticks with my dear friend Dorna in high school. They smiled out at hundreds or, on one occasion, thousands of theater-goers when I acted. For thirty years they smiled as I said goodbye to countless friends for what was to be the last time, though I didn’t know it. They smiled at all four of my departed grandparents for the last time, they smiled at my friend Tim for the last time now that he’s gone. They ate dozens of pre-show Chinese meals with the Oblong Rhonda dance troupe who performed with the Synth-Punk band I roadied for in San Francisco.

All these thoughts passed through my head as the doctor deftly drew the teeth. One shattered on my t-shirt. The nurse rushed to clean up the mess with her hand-vacuum before I realized what had happened. It took probably less than five or ten minutes to remove these once grand pearly whites from my head. They passed out of my body like time passes through our hands. By the time we were parted, they were no longer white. They were stained by coffee, tobacco, time, and decay. A Metaphor? Perhaps. Or perhaps the metaphor is in the partial denture which I will be wearing from now on.

I have a vague sense that people are uncomfortable when I talk about my dentures. Perhaps it’s

impolite? Too much information? Both my grandfathers worse denture. My Maternal grandfather was very particular about people not knowing his teeth were false. My Paternal grandfather didn’t much care. In the evening, he’d announce that he was going to go “wash his teeth”. As a kid, I assumed that was a Midwestern-peculiar phrase for brushing one’s teeth until I had been in his bathroom one night when his teeth were in a glass of EfferDent bubbling away. I find that I don’t much care if people know or are uncomfortable hearing about my dentures. It’s just one of those little ignominies we suffer as frail human machines. But I’ve never been good at knowing when I’m over-sharing.

I wish I understood why people are so reluctant to admit that they are frail machines. The frailties bind us together. They are a common challenge we all must face. A common experience we can unite around. I wonder what interesting things my new teeth and I are going to do together. Places we’ll go, things we’ll eat. It’s like a fresh start. Perhaps that is the real metaphor I can take away. Life renewing itself just in time for the second half.