Continents and Teeth: everything is relative, man

One fine hot Michigan day in the summer of 1979:

I, a chubby girl, was excited to carry out an order from Baskin-Robbins ice cream for my mom and older brother, the latter whom I worshipped. Excited to impress Brother Elder, I ran towards B-R with my head turned towards the car, yelling "what ice cream do you want?!" Mid-run, my little head whipped around and THUD, BANG! into a parking meter. A ring of stars and tweety birds encircled my head. I turned to Brother Elder and mom and smiled. They shrunk back in disgust. "Ew, gross," Brother Elder said. I crept forward to the car window, where I saw le disaster. Half my front tooth was gone. We looked for it on the sidewalk, but it was no use. The half tooth was history.

Except for a phase of embarrassing nights at Goth clubs during high school, all of which seemed to employ the then popular blue x-ray lights which made the tooth invisible (and hence render a flop my whole sexed up "Less-than-Zero" look), over the years modern dentistry gave me a plastic part that allowed me to forget about my tooth. Yet lately, coffee, cigarettes and jaw clenching stress have brought the front tooth back to the forefront. Changes needed to be made.




Thus, over the last week my mouth endured 7.6 hours of dental work, spread out over a consecutive three-day period. The periodontic subjects of the top row were prodded, filed, grinded, pulled and coated, resulting in a new tooth line. After Day 1, the top row was in agonizing revolt as the tectonic plates moved. The difference was only .08 mm, but the shifts were seismic.

We think very little about our teeth but lots about our gut. This is unfair, since they both get high marks on inhaling the world… But alas, teeth are so small, really— and small's a big deal. The tiniest change turns their world upside down. God forbid a canker sore enter the picture. Yet sooner or later, the wave of change stops, the gums settle, and a new pink and white landscape emerges. Soon the pearly whites can’t even recall a time when things were different. Revisionist history has taken hold: It was always this way.