I was home (again) this past weekend, very briefly, and made a startling discovery while pawing through things in my bedroom: I still have my old baby teeth in a little purse, in my old jewelry box.
I’ll give you a moment to “ewww.”
It’s okay. Like I said – I was a little shocked myself. And while I couldn’t bring myself to touch them, I did shake the bag around, looking for one particular tooth that was the bane of my existence – right up until it fell out.
Let me ‘splain.
When I was about a year and a half old, I was riding my little plastic tricycle down our driveway. It’s a bit of a steeper incline, to begin with, and the bottom half of the hill was also littered with various sized twigs and branches. Not a big deal for a car – HUGE deal for a tiny trike.
I managed to hit one such branch, which flipped me head over heels over my handlebars, and caused me to land on my face. My dad looked at me, as I had blood gushing from my mouth, and determined I’d be fine. Mama determined that we were going to the dentist.
The dentist determined that I needed a root canal. That bastard.
I was strapped to the table (because, honestly, what 18-month-old is going to lie still for someone drilling in her mouth?), and the torture commenced. And in the end, one of my front teeth was yellow.
About 5 years after the original torture. See that one tooth to the right? That darker one that doesn't fit in? Yeah, I hated that one.
I must have tried everything to make my tooth white again. For the longest time, I thought that if I brushed hard enough, I could change the color. Or, that I’d be able to leave some of the toothpaste on, just that one tooth, to mask the difference.
When that didn’t work? I did my very best to pull that sucker out – even before it was loose. I tried the string-tied-to-the-doorknob trick, and bit into numerous apples, hoping to coax out the monstrosity.
And after all of that trying to get it out, I still kept the damn thing for more than 15 years!
Go figure. I never claimed to make much sense.
Learning to Fly 