CRUNCH.

I somehow managed to chip one of my front teeth pretty significantly by biting into a fork today.

I knew something was horribly, horribly wrong as I felt the side of my tooth turn into an avalanche of enamel as my tongue slipped along its newly jagged spires…

With my eyes shut tight, I crawled into the bathroom… too afraid that my reflected smile would make me resemble one of the Washboard-playing hillbillies on Hee-Haw, or worse, British, I resolved to slowly flash an ever-widening smile while gently unscrewing my eyelids.

There is a new gap between two of my front teeth on the right side. It’s not hideous or even obvious unless you are looking for it, thank goodness. However, it’s clear that left untreated, it will become a receptacle for plaque and those bumpy, yet oddly cute cavity creatures that appear in toothpaste commercials.

My tongue revisits that area over and over, delighting in the sandpaper texture and needle fracture points.

I remember seeing a video of someone who had some caps replaced on his teeth, and I remember, vividly, the crunching sound the pliers made on his old tooth as the outer shell was ripped from the inner roots. I fear going to the dentist to learn he’ll have to tie strings around each of my teeth and a doorknob to yank them out… then he’ll use his hooked implements to snag each of my roots to stir them up a bit, “This might be a little uncomfortable.” After forcing me to rinse with lemon juice, he’ll have me watch in the little mirror as he uses his drill to dig very deep holes in my remaining teeth…. the smell of sulphur and burning flesh will almost overwhelm the whirring of rusty, sharp metal spinning into my skull, reverberating in the caverns of my ear canal, my cranium acting as a macabre sounding board. He will insert tiny plugs of dynamite into the tooth wells and he and his assistant will giggle like demon imps as they take turns pushing down the tiny plunger from across the room that explodes each molar into a haze of toothsmoke and blood… all without enough anesthetics (despite his jamming a 45-gauge needle into my cheek and shaking it violently, piercing my flesh all the way through my face multiple times)…

It’s either that or bonding… I think I would prefer bonding.