Los Dientes

Do you replace bad habits you want to get rid of with other bad habits that turn out to be more annoying that the previous habits?

When I was a small child my parents said they would give me a dime for everyday I didn’t pick my nose. That seemed like a pretty good deal. Problem solved.

Too bad I don’t get paid for not feeling my teeth with my tongue.

I used to go to California a lot when I was a kid, because most of my extended family is from there. I used to see one of my cousins a lot, one who had the habit of chewing the inside cheek of her mouth. After a week or so in her company, I came back to Flagstaff with this new habit, unbeknownst to me.

“Clair! Stop that! Stop chewing the inside of your mouth. If you keep doing that your face is going to stick like that.”

Now, I’ve heard that one before. I used to roll my eyes a lot, and was told if someone hit me on the back while I was doing that, my eyes would stick in the back of my head. I was horrified; I very rarely roll my eyes, because what if it’s true?

I don’t want to try it.

I was also told if I crossed my eyes a lot they would stick.

That proved to be true, and I had to wear an eye patch for my early formative years.

I’m not sure how I stopped being a cheek chewer, but I did it. Possibly by turning into a lip biter, which I was later informed in middle school was “kind of sexy” by some boy, and I immediately stopped, because he was totally gross.

As far back as I can remember I have been having a reoccurring dream of my teeth falling out. I was reading old journals from my elementary school days and was shocked that in between entries of, “I’m sick; I think I’m going to die,” and “Buffy the Vampire slayer rocks!” I found an entry that read, “Last night I dreamt I was looking in the mirror and my tooth fell out.”

Holy snots! I’ve been having this dream for 15+ years? Are you kidding me?

And there are many variations. Sometimes my teeth crumble and fall out as I look in the mirror and they fall into the sink. Sometimes I have to rinse them out of my mouth and they feel all gross and grainy. Sometimes they pop out whole, and I try to put them back. Once I dreamt I had a conversation with a friend’s girlfriend. After escaping the conversation I went into the school bathroom and began pulling out my teeth. I dream I pull out my teeth a lot.

Every morning after one of these weird-ass dreams I wake up, very relieved to have all my teeth.

I am constantly in tune with my teeth. I think about them all the time. They are always there.

I think I should add that I have never had a cavity. Except for that one on my wisdom tooth, but I don’t think that counts if the tooth is still living below my gum. I think that is beyond my control.

I had vampire teeth for a while, which I was o.k. with in middle school.

But by the time I was 17 I wanted a normal face and let the dentist pull out my baby vamp teeth so the adult ones could go where they ought to be. And my some good fortune they did, surely cheating some orthodontist out of a few thousand dollars.

It was that fateful visit though that began the next annoying mouth-related habit.

Jaw popping.

Corrie and I had around the same time discovered our jaw-popping habits correlated exactly with our most recent visits to the dentist. And now we cracked our jaws with gusto. Annoying the hell out of Patrick.

And we had fun with it. We discovered it was fun to trick people into thinking we were cracking our noses out of joint as we cracked our jaws.

Our eyebrows.

Our ears.

Sentences were punctuated with jaw cracks like exclamation points.

Then Corrie went to the dentist again and her jaw popping was stopped. I was left alone in my bad habit.

I suppose I could have gone to the dentist again. But I was 17, and the dentist said, “Next time, I think we should remove those wisdom teeth.”

“Oh, alright,” I said. But really I meant, “No way."

Katie had the good fortune to never grow wisdom teeth. She got a “Get out of oral surgery free” card in this game of monopoly.

So, six years passed by. Six jaw cracking great years. Two and two halves of wisdom teeth grew in and no longer bothered me.

Until one nice fall day last September when I was riding merrily along on my new motorcycle. A persistent tooth ache began to follow me about my daily business.

After successfully avoiding the dentist for all of my adult life, I now had to reconcile with myself that they were the only ones who could fix it and I must put my trust in the dentist as a small child would trust a parent to fix a broken toy.

However, my parents never took the broken toy, laughed and proceeded to throw it under an on-coming car.

Which is the equivalent of what the dentist did to my mouth.

The culprit? My left bottom wisdom tooth has developed a small cavity far under the gum, and it had gone, shall we say….bonkers?

“I think we need to remove it.”

“Remove it?” I squeaked. “You can’t just give me some pills and it will go away?”

“No I think we need to remove it.”

“You can’t just drill it?’

“Nope.”

“Oh. So, when do you want to remove it?”

“Now.”

“Oh…. Tomorrow?”

“No. Now.”

“Motorcycle….” I bemoaned.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I’ve never been afraid of the dentist.

I should have been.

She was really a sweet girl. It was only horrifying because she looked my age. And I am not old enough to be a dentist.

“Are you a dentist?”

“Yes.”

But I swear the paper I signed said, “STUDENT DENTIST,” on there.

A bazillion shots of Novocain later, they were ready to begin.

“What about laughing gas?” I asked. Though it sounded like, “wubba butt waffen gus?”

“Oh, we don’t have time for that. We would have had to start it when you first got in here.”

“Owwwkaaay.”

I think there was a kitten poster on the ceiling telling me something encouraging like, “Friends make me LOL!” But I soon forgot that. Because there were metal things in my mouth and I could feel them. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation of someone digging in the tissue of your mouth is a bit upsetting.

For the first minute.

Then it becomes horrible. Because you realize it’s going to take more than a minute.

It’s going to take two hours, the Novocain is going to wear off and you will feel the sharp thing dig into your face. And it will hurt. And you are going to have a swollen face for two days. And you will not ride your motorcycle for two weeks.

After she’s been going to town on my tooth prying it back and forth, suctioning the blood out of my mouth before I gag on it, for about an hour she called the REAL dentist over.

“Oh! Are you working on an extraction. Let’s have a looksy. Oh, yup, that’s a big one. You got quite a Neanderthal tooth there. Lemme give it a go.”

He takes the pliers and begins yanking my tooth around, bracing his arm against my face for leverage. I’m sitting there with my eyes popping out of my head terrified that this man is going to break my jaw. He’s not even looking at me as he pushes my tooth this way and that. I can hear the tooth grinding against the jaw as he gives his speech to the student dentist. I feel anxiety rising.

I scream a little. He stops.

“Does that hurt?”

“Uhhhhuuhhh,” I warble even though I can’t feel my tongue and a mouth prop is wedged between my teeth.

I realize now that there is a lull that my limbs are shaking uncontrollably. I’m freaking out a little.

“Well, there you go, take over. Call me if you need anything, you’re doing great.”

The student dentist goes back to her namby-pamby time-consuming tooth removal approach.

I realize now that there would simply be no way I was going to Late for the Train today.

After another stretch of time, the real dentist comes back in and finishes the brutal job. He pulls from my face a gigantic bloody tooth.

“Camakuput?” I ask.

“Sure you can keep it!” I make as if I’m ready to go, until, “wait, there’s still a piece in there.”

“Thabs uka.”

“No, we need to remove it.”

“Tomorrow?’

“No, now.”

I settle back into the chair. The Novocain begins to wear off.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to leave it, it should be okay.”

They send me home shaking with vague socket rinsing instructions which I f&%$ up because I so badly don’t want to get infected that I rinse to vigorously and get dry socket instead.

They gave me Vicodin, which I thought was nice, but I look for a lot more in a friend than just someone who will give me drugs.

I realized after a day of vicodin that it was not a peace offering, but a further punishment. Dentists don’t like it if you only visit them once a decade. Otherwise how do they feed their cats?

To celebrate my new possible vicodin addiction I decided to watch a House MD marathon. I thought it would be fun to pop a pill everytime he did, but thought the better of it. It takes a long time to build up that kind of vicodin tolerance in your body.

As it turns out my vicodin tolerance was none.

After successfully not throwing up since I was 8, I lost my maryjane infused mashed potatoes all over the kitchen floor. It was amazing. I never saw it coming. My mother gave me a purple bucket as a get well present.

A week later they made me come back to get the left over bit of tooth out.

Did I mention that tooth was huge? I saved it. Sometimes I look at it if I want to gross myself out. I may give it away as a token of my affection to someone I don’t like.

In the weeks after this “extraction,” I would explore the gaping hole with the tip of my tongue. I would look at it in the bathroom mirror for signs of….something.

One night, I noticed, there, in the flesh, imbedded, was, a shard of jaw. I poked at it relentlessly until it was dislodged.

I did not sleep that night.

And so now I fiddle with my teeth with my tongue.

Because they feel neat. And I can make a click noise if I do it just right.

So, if you see me making a funny face, now you know what I’m doing. And you can say. “Clair, stop it!” I hope with the help of everyone who reads this that this vulgar and uncomely habit can be put to an end. Feel free to also give me a dime for every day that you don’t see me doing it.