Teef

Ah, another pleasant morning at the dentist, third of four visits on the schedule. Today's adventure was Indiana Jones and the Gums of Doom, wherein Our Hero's deep periodontal excavations, on the order of an archaeological dig to undercover the base of the Spinyx, involved shovels, picks, scrapers, front-loaders, and dredging to such depth that I was feeling pains in my toes ...

What I get for, ah, accidentally skipping my six-month cleanings three or four times in a row.

After the gums heal -- six weeks or so, they say -- I get to go back and see what's what. Twixt now and then, there's the new crown to be fitted ...

When it came to genetics, I got my mother's dentition. My father never had a cavity until he was past forty. Mama had full dentures by the time she was twenty-one.

My first memory of a dental exam was when I was about six, at which point I was found to have more cavities than years. In those days, we brushed our teeth once a day for about thirty seconds total, never saw a container of floss, and came from a culture wherein the mothers put Coca Cola in babies' bottles to calm them down when they were fussy.

I spent a lot of time in the dentist's chair getting drilled and filled. Later, root canals and crowns came along.

I started going by myself when I was about twelve. Dropped off, or walked. And such a horror of needles had I that for five or six years and probably ten fillings, I wouldn't allow the dentist -- kindly old Dr. LeBlanc -- to use Novacaine. It wasn't until I was in my late teens that I realized the injection up front was a whole lot less painful than withstanding the drill for half an hour.

A whole lot less painful.

Ah, well. Though I have enough metal in my mouth to set off the detectors at the airport, I still have all my own pearly whites. Well. Not so much white as old ivory-colored, and some of them gold ...

Brush 'em, kids, and floss, and get them scraped at least every year or so. Most tooth loss is not from caries but from gum disease. You need to stay ahead of it, or you'll look like that guy in the trailer park being interviewed after the tornado ...