I had potato chips for breakfast.
This is not a generally healthy practice to begin with, and it was a pretty horrible choice if I had had the goal to have a good, or even semi-decent, morning. Because when I bit into my second breakfast chip a humongous chunk of my front top tooth broke off, leaving a huge cavernous hole that could rival the canyon in Twin Falls that Evel Knievel tried to jump over on his "skycycle" in 1974.
At least it FELT that big. (Sometimes I get a little dramatic - but it wasn't tiny, I swear.)
It didn't hurt though. Because my front top teeth are dead anyway.
My 9th grade spring break was pretty eventful for my teeth. I thought it would be great to learn how to skateboard that week. (I had the skater jeans, I just needed to actually skateboard.) So my friend and I took the only skateboard we had, which was an old skinny board that my aunt got in the 70's that rocked back and forth on its rickety old wheels.
We were only trying to jump off the sidewalk. Not anything tricky. Not even trying to jump ON the sidewalk. Just off. It seemed like a simple way to start.
Except that I forgot about my coordination problems. And how I mostly just look like a newborn 3-legged giraffe whenever trying to do anything physical. (I was the kid in our neighborhood that could crash -or even just fall over- on their bike just because.)
I don't think it took too many attempts before the moment my teeth were changed forever. Instead of jumping the skateboard off the sidewalk, I just jammed the front end into the gutter, which flung me, teeth first, into the asphalt. I'm pretty sure they were the first things to hit before I skidded up my face.
It was pretty stinking glorious. (Of course you'll have to ask my friend, Cathy, how amazingly awesome I looked flying into the street that day.)
Luckily most of my face was saved through sheer dweebiness.
I had glasses, which were scratched and bent horribly, but protected my eyes. And my amazing dorky braces saved my teeth. YAY for dorky braces. My teeth probably would have been permanently wedged in the road if my braces didn't keep them in my mouth. Except they were pulled out of their sockets, so I had to rush to my orthodontist where he SLOWLY pushed them back in. (That was so much more painful than the lightening quickness in which they were yanked out.)
But before I could get to my orthodontist I had to get home, which wasn't hard since I only lived around the block. What was hard was convincing my mom on the phone that I was bleeding from multiple places on my face and needed her to get home ASAP. Yeah, my mom thought I was just fooling around when I told her. I'm pretty sure I had to break out in fresh sobs to convince her that it wasn't a joke. (Obviously I was an incredibly serious child who never made up wild stories for any reason EVER......or I did......a lot.)
So anyways. After that I had to see an endodontist to take care of my teeth which were dead and apparently in root shock. Every 3 months I would visit to have him yank stuff out of the canals of those teeth and jam more root stuff back in. Basically it was like a double root canal. Every few months. For over a year. (Also I couldn't use the gas that is supposed to make things less stressful, because it just makes me sick. Which I found out once when I puked at the dentist office with a fully numbed mouth - with the ENTIRE dental staff watching.)
And now I have dead, brittle, short-rooted top front teeth. That apparently hate potato chips. They hate them so much, in fact, they are willing to break apart and jump right out of my mouth to avoid them.
But GOOD NEWS, because while I was at the dentist office in a state of freaking-out-ed-ness I had a chance to ask about Two Bit's double set of teeth and I guess it's really not that big of deal as long as we keep them clean and the baby teeth fall out before she turns 37......or 9. Either way, I'm pretty sure we're gonna be ok.
Well, as long as I can convince my teeth to stay in my head from now on.
This is not a generally healthy practice to begin with, and it was a pretty horrible choice if I had had the goal to have a good, or even semi-decent, morning. Because when I bit into my second breakfast chip a humongous chunk of my front top tooth broke off, leaving a huge cavernous hole that could rival the canyon in Twin Falls that Evel Knievel tried to jump over on his "skycycle" in 1974.
At least it FELT that big. (Sometimes I get a little dramatic - but it wasn't tiny, I swear.)
It didn't hurt though. Because my front top teeth are dead anyway.
My 9th grade spring break was pretty eventful for my teeth. I thought it would be great to learn how to skateboard that week. (I had the skater jeans, I just needed to actually skateboard.) So my friend and I took the only skateboard we had, which was an old skinny board that my aunt got in the 70's that rocked back and forth on its rickety old wheels.
We were only trying to jump off the sidewalk. Not anything tricky. Not even trying to jump ON the sidewalk. Just off. It seemed like a simple way to start.
Except that I forgot about my coordination problems. And how I mostly just look like a newborn 3-legged giraffe whenever trying to do anything physical. (I was the kid in our neighborhood that could crash -or even just fall over- on their bike just because.)
I don't think it took too many attempts before the moment my teeth were changed forever. Instead of jumping the skateboard off the sidewalk, I just jammed the front end into the gutter, which flung me, teeth first, into the asphalt. I'm pretty sure they were the first things to hit before I skidded up my face.
It was pretty stinking glorious. (Of course you'll have to ask my friend, Cathy, how amazingly awesome I looked flying into the street that day.)
Luckily most of my face was saved through sheer dweebiness.
I had glasses, which were scratched and bent horribly, but protected my eyes. And my amazing dorky braces saved my teeth. YAY for dorky braces. My teeth probably would have been permanently wedged in the road if my braces didn't keep them in my mouth. Except they were pulled out of their sockets, so I had to rush to my orthodontist where he SLOWLY pushed them back in. (That was so much more painful than the lightening quickness in which they were yanked out.)
But before I could get to my orthodontist I had to get home, which wasn't hard since I only lived around the block. What was hard was convincing my mom on the phone that I was bleeding from multiple places on my face and needed her to get home ASAP. Yeah, my mom thought I was just fooling around when I told her. I'm pretty sure I had to break out in fresh sobs to convince her that it wasn't a joke. (Obviously I was an incredibly serious child who never made up wild stories for any reason EVER......or I did......a lot.)
So anyways. After that I had to see an endodontist to take care of my teeth which were dead and apparently in root shock. Every 3 months I would visit to have him yank stuff out of the canals of those teeth and jam more root stuff back in. Basically it was like a double root canal. Every few months. For over a year. (Also I couldn't use the gas that is supposed to make things less stressful, because it just makes me sick. Which I found out once when I puked at the dentist office with a fully numbed mouth - with the ENTIRE dental staff watching.)
And now I have dead, brittle, short-rooted top front teeth. That apparently hate potato chips. They hate them so much, in fact, they are willing to break apart and jump right out of my mouth to avoid them.
But GOOD NEWS, because while I was at the dentist office in a state of freaking-out-ed-ness I had a chance to ask about Two Bit's double set of teeth and I guess it's really not that big of deal as long as we keep them clean and the baby teeth fall out before she turns 37......or 9. Either way, I'm pretty sure we're gonna be ok.
Well, as long as I can convince my teeth to stay in my head from now on.
Comments
Your ninth grade story is terrifying to me. I'm so glad you told it, though, because if anything like that happens to one of my kids I will hopefully not just die on the spot but remember that within a year they may be okay and only maybe ten or fifteen years later will they actually start losing their teeth. I will warn them off of potato chips for life in case that might help. . .
Hooray for emergency orthodontists and dentists...I guess.
See? Can't comment ;)