Sometimes you know you’ve got something stuck in your teeth and since you’re in polite company you’ve got to pretend it isn’t there. Well, most of us do anyway. As soon as you get somewhere semi-private the fingernail or edge of a paper is deployed on a particle finding mission. There’s nothing quite like the relief you feel when you dislodge that hunk of meat or vegetable from your teeth. It’s satisfying on a physical level (no more annoying feeling of something that’s just not right in your buccal cavity and your tongue breathes a sigh of relief from the knowledge it no longer is tasked with a job it was not designed to do) and on an emotional level because you know you can now smile freely without the inhibition that gripped you while you had the hunk of food in your tooth. I grew up in a time when going to the dentist meant new cavities and the whole drill and fill sequence. Every time. I’m sure Dr. George’s family benefited greatly from our teeth. Anyway, they have the whole cavity thing mostly taken care of now with various fluoride treatments and, needing a money maker, they’ve shifted to cosmetic dentistry. Had I been born a couple of decades later I am sure my parents would have been advised that my crooked teeth needed straightening otherwise I’d end up living in a cardboard box somewhere in San Francisco and forced to do my pooping on the curb. Alright, my teeth aren’t that bad but I do have a big gap between my upper incisor and canine tooth on the right. Sure enough, like the sun rising in the east, every time I eat there is some fragment of food stuck in there. I call it my “Meat Tooth”.
