Hole in the Mouth

So one of the fourth graders lost a tooth a couple days ago. I was a little confused - aren't kids usually done losing teeth by ten-ish? I'm pretty sure I was. That said, my tooth losing experience was a little . . . unusual.

I lost my first tooth when I was - I think - five. I was stuck in "quiet time" (now that's one parental mystery that makes a lot more sense now!) wide awake but pretty sure it was too soon to try reappearing outside the bedroom without getting in trouble. So I had to occupy myself with just what I could find on my top bunk bed. That would probably be tough now, but little kids are pretty creative. Well, my mom had this gloriously eighties-tastic aerobics cassette that she used all the time, and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I'm laying on my bed and I end up doing these reverse crunches sort of thing where you bring your knees to your chest instead of chest to knees. Now as we all know, little kids are a lot more flexible than adults too . . . at least I was. So eventually I knee myself in the mouth. Not particularly hard. But hard enough to knock front tooth out.

Important notes: 1- I'm the oldest. 2- This tooth was not noticeably loose beforehand. 3- Ergo, my parents had neglected to mention that teeth fall out.

So, naturally, I panicked. I was absolutely certain my parents were going to kill me. Seriously, if you get in trouble for snapping off an easily reattachable barbie head what's going to happen when you break yourself?! And then there's the fact that I now had a permanent gaping HOLE in my mouth and how was I going to eat for the rest of my life without this tooth?!?!?

By the way, I developed a ridiculously over-active imagination pretty quickly. Can you tell? :-)

So I'm trying to figure out what to do and for some reason I decided to go with the "maybe they won't notice" route. So I carefully hide the tooth amid my blankets and eventually get up the guts to head out to the living room. Where I held my hand in front of my mouth every time I spoke, with the vague plan to talk like that for the rest of my life. Because nobody's going to notice that, right? :-) Good times. And you know, I'm not really sure if my parents actually didn't notice initially or were just trying to figure out what the heck I was up to somewhat tactfully. (I was also staying on the opposite side of the room - not that far away, but I thought it would help.) Eventually my mom got me next to her and pulled my hand down whilst I was talking. At which point my panic dissolved into sheer terror at the trouble I was about to get into and started sobbing about how it was an accident and I didn't mean to and would glue work to make it go back in and I would never do those reverse crunch things again and I'm seriously sitting here cracking up because of the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing. And this was one of those times that the parental units couldn't hold in the laughs until later - I remember my mom laughing right away while I was sitting there all distraught. I think my dad might have actually even laughed . . . and those of you who know my dad know just how big a deal that is.

So everything got explained and I was enormously relieved and the next morning there was a quarter under my pillow (and can I just say - how the crap did that little tradition get started? So bizarre . . . ). But from what I hear, payment for teeth has really gone up. Kids are apparently getting as much as five bucks per tooth or more! I call totally gypped!! Totally need to hunt down Dwayne Johnson and get me some tooth-interest money. :-)

Then a few months later I was at school running behind the swing set at recess. Someone jumped out of their swing whilst still going massively high and I got hit in the face, and my other front tooth - which was also not loose yet - was still attached, but at a ninety degree angle to my gum. Yeah . . . that was unpleasant. And made pretty much everything difficult for, like, two months until that tooth finally decided to fall out. I really hope there aren't any pictures of me from those couple of months. Good times.

Moral of the story: tell your kids that teeth fall out. (I'm thinking Sammy . . . Nathan . . . Katie . . . Trevor . . . Alessa . . . )

P. ost S. cript
Dude. Teal'c. On MacGyver. Smiling . . . LAUGHING!!!!! This is quite possibly the weirdest - yet coolest - thing I've ever seen. Ep. Ic.