FREE AND ACCEPTED

My teeth serve as keys in my organ of pain, each one bringing its own unique and colorful torture to the collection. A quick brush across them with my tongue reveals the most painful song I’ve ever known. 

Thankfully, my front teeth are in tact. They allow me the luxury of chewing my food, and also smiling without looking like a backwoods reprobate. For this reason, people tend to think I’m exaggerating my pain. My teeth are straight and relatively white. They look healthy enough, but all I have to do is open wide and reveal the sideshow hidden in the back, and suddenly the conversation shifts toward a very uncomfortable silence, either because they’re disgusted or in disbelief that a human being can function in such elaborate and unapologetic pain. 

The prize in my collection is a little something I like to call the biggest mistake of my entire life. At some point in my mid-twenties, I developed my worst cavity at that time, about the size of an eraser head. This was the beginning of unrelenting pain in my life. I didn’t have insurance or money to get it pulled or fixed, so I did the worst thing a person could possibly do in a situation like this. I took a hobby knife, a screw and a pair of pliers, and I got to work. I poked and scraped with the knife until it created a large enough hole to fit the screw. I then twisted the screw until it was embedded far enough into my tooth to crack it. I picked up the pliers, put them around the head of the screw, counted to three, and yanked.

Don’t believe me? Write me. Ask to see a picture. I’ll take one and show it to you. You’ll be sorry you asked. 

It didn’t quite work according to plan. I didn’t account for the roots. One of them is still in there. The other one had been coming out in sharp pieces over the course of the past 13 years. It was only recently that the last remaining bloody shard finally ejected itself into my diet cola. I saw it resting on top of an ice cube and knew immediately what it was.

One more root to go. The day it finally happens, I’ll throw a party. 

If I have any wisdom at all to impart, it’s this: Don’t extract your own teeth. Go to the dentist instead. 

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