I Broke My Tooth And It Keeps Biting Me

I broke my tooth two weeks ago sitting on my couch while watching a YouTube video and noshing on a bit of dark chocolate. I read somewhere that dark chocolate has flavanols that boost nitric oxide, which relaxes the blood vessel lining. Supposed to lower my blood pressure. Instead, it raised my blood pressure.

I don’t chew my bits of dark chocolate so much as I break them into smaller bits in my mouth then let the tasty goodness melt slowly until it dissolves in a final flourish. While enjoying the meltage, I felt a piece of…what is that? Sand?! I reached up and fished out the unwelcome bit. Brown fuzz covered the end of my finger. Remembering I need my readers to see small things up close, I pulled them down from my head and the offending piece of sand came into focus, but not a piece of sand. It was a bit of broken tooth. This was not the first piece of broken tooth I’ve pulled from my mouth. I know bits of tooth enamel when I see them. And there it sat, pale white in a pool of brown, chocolatey goo.

I was confused. I hadn’t heard or felt anything crack or shift in my mouth, so I immediately sent my tongue to find its source. SLISH! It bit me. The inside, bottom corner of one of my two front teeth. Gone. The gap felt massive.

I got up and looked in my bathroom mirror to confirm the break. And there it was. A millimeter of missing tooth. From the front, you’d have to stare hard to notice. But from where my tongue lay, the break created a sort of V-shaped blade, like you’d see on a seam ripper. Small. Sharp.

The tip of my tongue kept finding the groove and getting nipped. And it happened with that sudden randomness of pain you’d experience when you step on a Lego with your bare foot in the dark. Except I couldn’t avoid the tongue ripper. If I swallowed with any vigor, the vacuum created would pull my tongue into the gap and SLISH, gotcha! Or worse, the soft, innocent part on the inside of my upper lip would get sucked in, and I’d have to pull my lip with my fingers to extricate my flesh from its claw. Thankfully, it happened so often that the inside of my lip is sufficiently swollen to hinder sliding into the gap of rippage. Most of the time.

Of course, I could visit my dentist, Dr. Pepper, and let her fix it. And yes, my dentist’s name is indeed Dr. Pepper. I’ve never joked with her about it as I’ve assumed she’s heard every lame wisecrack about a dentist named Dr. Pepper. It doesn’t help that her personality is as bubbly and sweet as the soft drink. It’s right there. But I think it unwise to annoy or anger any person who lays you back and inserts sharp, metal tools in the recesses of your mouth.

Dr. Pepper would fix my broken tooth easy peasy. For which I would have to pay. And that’s the broken part of the process. Because I don’t quite have the resources in my bank account to cover the expense of an emergency tooth repair. The air conditioning in my wife’s car also broke at about the same time. My lack of extra resources forced me to choose between an angry mouth and a car that didn’t have functional air conditioning in the waning heat of the American South. My Beloved, my wife, confirmed that my broken tooth was annoying but functional and not bleeding, which could not be said for the air conditioning. I made a choice.

So every day, my tooth nips me, randomly. I know it’s there, that raggedy, sharp-edged tongue biter. I can’t escape it. Sip my coffee and SLISH. Chew my breakfast, SLONK. Once an hour. Fourteen times in two minutes. Random. And the tip of my tongue is sore but not yet mangled. It makes my hot sauce hotter and I’ve noticed that salt tastes saltier. Or maybe that’s blood. I don’t look. But it’s not unbearable. And nearly every time my tooth bites me, I remember items from my TO DO list. Or things I need to do that are not yet on my TO DO list. And both the pinches and the list are annoying. The correlation is odd to me, although it makes sense when I think that a broken tooth and undone tasks are painful in a relativistic sort of way. Namely, they both hurt a little.

The pinching reminds me of how life has a way of disrupting you when you don’t expect it to. Or want to. Like, things breaking. Or failing. Or unplanned events messing with your routine. Some are no big deal. Finding I don’t have cream for my coffee, for instance. Add it to the shop list and carry on. But others carry more weight, like learning our eldest granddaughter was in her first driving accident. She and her passenger are sore but OK. But her truck was rear-ended by the car one car back and likely has a bent frame. A bent frame is a big deal but not really, depending on who you ask. The best part of this is that no one was seriously injured. SLISH. Which reminds me I have to text her to let her know we love her.

Sometimes I think life happens in the disruptions and breaking of our routines. Reminders that stuff needs doing and problems need addressing. Because it’s easy for me to settle into the algorithmic routines that I built into my life. I live by my routines. It’s how I get the everyday, have-to-happen, kinds of things done. Except I prefer to prioritize the nice-to-happen kinds of things because dealing with have-to-happen stuff can be a significant pain in the ass. Or tongue.

I’m fully aware that life’s little annoyances, if ignored, become bigger. Not always but usually. At least in my life. Ignore the stuff and, at some point, I have to decide when the pain requires me to find a way to pay for the bubbly dentist to fix the damned tooth. That may take a week, or it might take a decade. It depends on my pain tolerance and willingness to ignore the uncomfortable realities in my life when the discomfort of ignoring the problem is more bearable than the discomfort of dealing with the problem. Either choice is an action, though.

Action begets outcomes. I have heard that imperfect action is better than no action at all. But I find that often depends on the choices in front of me. Hamburgers or tacos is a choice, and if the burger is awful, we choose tacos next time and life goes on. But to fix my tooth right now would add to my debt, since my emergency fund was depleted two emergencies ago. Or was it three? And the discomfort in my mouth seems more bearable than dealing with $1,000 on a credit card at 21% APR. Even if my APR were at 12%, it would still be a sucky choice.

Which leaves me aware that my life’s annoyances are a mix of random shit with my choices folded in to yield an amalgamation of craptastic moments I get to call “life.” Some of my choices are good and wise. Some are dumb, embarrassing, and full of regrets. Often, the random events of life press so hard that choosing well is reduced to awful choice A or B. For those of you who would point out that I could choose C thru Z, I would say, yeah, good for you, some of us don’t have that many options. Heck, I remember when I had no options, and given my circumstances, I would drive to the grocery sweating in 90°-plus heat with my tooth tearing at the tip of my tongue. Because, sometimes that’s what life deals you.

And while I’m chasing ways to pay our bills, fix my tooth, and live life, I remain grateful. Yeah. In spite of my broken tooth, I’m grateful I get to face the craptasticity (almost sounds like elasticity) of it all with my Beloved, my bestie of thirty-seven years. Sometimes we shake our heads or cry a little. Sometimes we throw up our hands and dance to the music in the moment, usually me humming something slow, because I still like slow dancing with her.

I am grateful I am alive and I experience the disappointments and the celebrations. Both are part of life, aren’t they? And even when the crap piles on over days or weeks, as life is wont to do, facing it with a grateful heart keeps the crap in perspective. If I am going to enjoy the sweet moments, the beautiful events, and delightful times, then I accept that the other side of life is part of the deal. Not in a simplistic, binary exchange of good and bad. If only life were that simple. Good can come from bad. And bad can blunt what’s good. My granddaughter likely lost her truck, but remains alive and relatively unscathed. What will come out of it, I don’t know. But I get to tell her I love her still, for another day.

Yesterday, I stood on my porch, looking out on the fading day. I could feel the change in the air as the edge of summer pushes against the coming autumn. A warm breeze sent the rye grass on my lawn dancing. The sounds of children laughing and playing drifted from somewhere over the hill. My lip got stuck in my tooth ripper. And I was grateful. Grateful to be alive in the moment, a moment of no import. And yet, full of life for me.

Because when I feel the pressure of it all, I’m grateful for my wife and our friends, our community, and family. I’m grateful to have breath and strength to walk and work out. I can make supper, call my mama and tell her I love her and hear her remind me that she loves me more. I am grateful to share memes and links with my brother and sister, laughing or shaking our heads in wonder. To listen to my friend sing, or talk of the wonders and pains of life over lunch. To play my piano or work a puzzle with my wife. To mow my lawn, wash the dishes, or take a hot shower on a chilled morning.

I’m grateful because gratitude reminds me that I am alive. And that life is abundant and full, even when some of it pinches a bit. Which reminds me…