Teeth
I like teeth. It’s not something I think about often, but when I do, I realize I like them a lot. From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, I like them because they’re part of faces, and faces are something I really like and often think about, especially when they’re smiling. Teeth are a big part of that.
Beyond aesthetics, I like tapping things against my teeth. I don’t know when it started, and I was never a pen/fingernail chewer, but I frequently tap fingernails and pens against them when I’m thinking. In particular, my right thumbnail against the right first molar and pens against my right canine.
When I younger, I told people I wanted to be a dentist. I would tell them it was because I wanted to be a doctor, but didn’t want to deal with the blood a “regular” doctor does. For a number of reasons, that’s complete bullshit (most important being that I have absolutely no problem with blood), but it got to the point where I believed it myself. I’m sure it had something to do with my brother being older and brilliant, and me trying to be equally brilliant but slightly different.
Around age 16 I was conscious of the fact that I didn’t actually want to be a dentist. That’s right 11th grade provincial French exam instructor, I lied when I said I wanted to be a dentist because I like putting my fingers in peoples’ mouths! Truthfully, this former Nova Scotian simply didn’t know how to say “well, I used to want to be a dentist, but lately I’ve started second-guessing that choice and don’t really have a clear idea” in French and had no other answer for “what kind of career do you want?” So I took the simple/creepier route, and insisted I meant what I said to the point of pretending to demonstrate the aforementioned like on my exam partner before he (thankfully!) backed off in mock fear.
My teeth have treated me fairly well. I had two cavities in elementary school, but they’ve otherwise grown in straight and healthy; a new dentist didn’t believe me when I told him I’d never had braces. That treatment, though, wasn’t always mutual. When I was thirteen, in the Harvey’s at Cure-Labelle and Favreaux in Laval, QC, I chipped my tooth eating a hamburger. I was sitting on the right hand side in the booth closest to the aisle, facing the door, and took a too-hard/irresponsible chomp when I felt something wrong. Before I knew it, I’d swallowed a piece of tooth and didn’t want to finish my burger. Luckily, it soon fell out and was replaced by a newer, stronger version.
The dentist I went to in high school had an identical twin brother, with whom he shared the practise. They were two very funny middle-aged Jewish men who competed with each other on a daily basis about the physical size of patient files. Always a good time.
One afternoon I went to visit my friend, Adam, and commented on the fancy red sports car in his driveway. “Oh that’s Mom’s new boyfriend’s,” he explained. “Here he comes now.” I looked up and saw my dentist, sans shirt, walking away from their pool. I hoped it was twin—it wasn’t. Converse to what I assumed, visits were nicer after that since now we had a common ground. I eventually lost touch with Adam, but it was good to hear occasional updates.
One night I was watching the news and heard a name I recognized. Apparently, Adam had started growing pot for the Hell’s Angels and got caught. It was incredibly weird seeing a high school friend being escorted in cuffs on TV. After that, he was never mentioned at appointments, but my dentist seemed more interested in the relative normality of my life. When I told him I was moving at our last visit, he unexpectedly hugged me and I finally realized that his post-Adam interest was a subtle way of encouraging a fatherless kid to succeed, because he could no longer do that with Adam.
I didn’t see a dentist for about six years after that, banking on their “my teeth are so straight that even dentists think I had braces!” nature. Unfortunately, those years overlapped with my body piercing phase and they got a bit chipped by the metal in my tongue and mouth. When one started to hurt, I realized it was time to get a new dentist but didn’t know how. I asked my doctor and was told you don’t get referrals to dentists, you just call them. He wasn’t allowed to officially recommend one, so I asked him who he went to. I got a funny look, but I also got a name.
The new dentist is great. He has a hyper-modern practise and uses “microscopic” all over his promotional literature. He’s also the most yuppie thing about my life. You can get free Botox consultations in-house, he wears black jeans and very nice shoes; and cosmetic procedures are suggested at the same level of importance as necessary surgeries. But on top of that he’s an amazing dentist, has thankfully never pressured me into cosmetic anythings, and I didn’t feel a bit of discomfort during a recent root canal.
Teeth are on my mind today because my fourth wisdom tooth just started crowning—the penultimate stage in my oral development. My third popped out earlier this year, so it’s been a good year for “things that should have happened 10 years ago.” Maybe I’ll get my license, too.
The final stage will be losing my last baby tooth. I had two teeth that were supposed to fall out and never grow back—the X-rays showed nothing growing underneath. Coincidentally, they’re the two on which I had cavities and outlived all my other baby teeth. About five years ago, one of them fell out and another grew in right away. Excellent! The other one, however, has been in my mouth for more than 25 years, still has the same filling, and is showing no signs that it intends to leave.
In a way, my immature teeth have represented an excuse for my life as an adult impostor. I’m not really sure what that means, but my youthful idea of adulthood was that it was the most boring fate possible. You spend your childhood learning how to be good at things you like, then you spend your adulthood needing weekends to unwind from the 40 hours a week you spend doing things you hate. Worst of all, the reason you work that job you hate is to afford to do the things you like. That whole notion has always horrified me, and I’ve managed to work out an almost-ideal version of adult for myself. That basically-dead baby tooth is the five year old me screaming “don’t give in! You’ll hate it!”
But what if that isn’t just my metaphorical adult impostor? What if it falls out, and suddenly it makes perfect sense for me to rent my brain out for 40 hours per week? What if it falls out, and I no longer think it’s worthwhile spending my evenings thinking and writing about the implications of having a baby tooth left at age 29? What if it falls out, and I’m suddenly ashamed of discussing the insanely Freudian “oral stage” overtones implied in paragraph two? What if it falls out, and I don’t even realize those changes have happened?
I didn’t have a conclusion, and this is far too long than a post titled “Teeth” ever should be, but I’ve just realized that I’ve been tapping my teeth against each other this whole time—alternating between left top canine against left lower canine, and right top canine against right lower canine. I think that works.
Tap tap. Tap tap.
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