I’ve had the darnedest time with my new teeth and I’m wondering if maybe I should have kept the old ones. A few years ago my dentist told me I needed new teeth because, after a careful examination, he found I had a mouth full of havoc heading for a decade of dental bills. He said I had a few years of normal eating left on the short side but years of gumming in the long term. I carefully weighed the evidence, my sixty years of chewing versus his dental school experience and said, “do what you will young man, all’s I want is one more shot at the Halloween candy when the big night rolls around.” I stopped doing the trick or treat thing a few years ago, after what I consider to be a modern day record of fifty seven years on everything from homemade fudge to poisoned “alternatives”, but find the stuff the wife brings home from Kroger irresistible and worth the gamble.

So you can imagine my dismay when I bit down on a hamburger the other day and found three teeth that looked sort of like mine, buried in the bun. I say sort of because I was not one hundred percent sure, having never seen the things outside my mouth and alone. Finding these guys in the bun surprised me because I don’t have cheese on my burgers…cheese being a major adhesive and guaranteed to suck the glue right off your gums. Still, an obviously irritated molar stared up at me as if to say, “How did anyone like you manage to own a home with a toilet on the inside? You remember what Dr. Pliers told you about that bridge don’t you?” I had but how does one avoid eating a hamburger? Getting an up close and personal look at one’s teeth demands a decision, particularly if you’re in the company of other people enjoying their meal. It reminds me of the time I bit into a donut and found one of those bugs with two tails staring me in the face. I didn’t know whether to “swaller” or holler and probably did both, figuring most of him was still in the half I was holding, so… I “swollered” (a term used for when you ingest something you’d rather not). I suppose I didn’t want to embarrass the assemblage at the donut shop and getting my money’s worth was important at the time.

At this writing I am now without another bridge (so named because, theoretically it connects a couple of teeth still intact with a couple who would be floating in one’s mouth if not attached to something that is not attempting to go it alone) and eating has become rather like biting into an oyster and finding a pearl of no worth. It is interesting however, as the bridge floats while you chew, that you just never know when that pearl is going to say, “You’d better try the other side for a bite or two; your teeth are not at home.” This is no big deal for me as I have always loved baby food… my favorites being custard pudding and creamed peas. But even my close friends would find it strange if I simply reverted to the baby food diet and stopped eating meat. So I’m in a bit of a quandary here, as I have no dentist (mine being detained somewhere with an answering machine that simple says, “We’ll be back in October”) and am wondering how long I will be eating pearls. I’m left wondering if the old teeth might have been better kept where they were and simply left to “stand in the gap”, so to speak. I suppose you could say I’m having a Thermopylae moment without the Spartans.