TATTOO on the HEART

In process (Part 1) – A New Tooth

// April 20th, 2009 // EVERYDAY LIFE

Well, I seemed to have fallen off the face of the planet over the last week and with good reason: I didn’t have internet access.  Okay, I guess I should say I had internet access on my Blackberry, and although WordPress has an app that you can use to blog from your mobile, I just couldn’t imagine writing more than a paragraph with my thumbs.  I’d imagine that’d take forever – and it’d be dated by the time I got it live. 

My Twitter updates were less than expressive and pretty vague as well, so I’ll use the next few blogs to try to help me process the last week of my life.

I’ve actually avoided blogging for the last two days because it was one of those overwhelming feelings of “where do I even begin.”  So I suppose I’m going to make a valiant attempt – at least an attempt anyway – to unpack my experiences, thoughts, and feelings.  Some of this will be utter nonsense, but some will be profound.  Don’t expect it to be chronologically accurate.

A NEW CROWN…

I finally got a new crown for my front tooth.  Somebody told me the other day that I just needed to take better care of my teeth.  I said, “I have – ever since I got kicked in the face when I was 16 years old.” 

The crown worked beautifully for years and with precision sliced through perhaps 1000s of hamburgers, 10,000 slices of pizza, 100s of PoBoys (it’s a Louisiana thing if you’re scratching your head), and one expensive, disgusting Mediterranean meal that made me second guess whether I had legitimate Palestinian genes or not.

My first bite of a Nutty Buddy in a booth of a little coffee shop on Newport Ave with Jadyn turned out to be the most expensive ice cream I’ve ever eaten.

I swallowed my crown and it was stuck in throat.  I would have gone to the bathroom immediately to try to cough it up, but it was one of those wonderful businesses on Newport that isn’t friendly to homeless people with full bladders – nor is it friendly to paying customers.  So Jadyn and I ran home immediately.

On the 1.5 mile drive, I reminisced about a guy I saw on the Tonight Show back in the 80’s who could swallow a Rubik’s cube, flip it in his stomach, then upchuck it and show it to the audience.  I figured if that guy could pull off a stunt like that, surely I could force myself to puke up a small tooth.

Minutes later, my bathroom looked like I was trying to film a behind-the-scenes episode of America’s Next Top Model.  I’ve never tried to force myself to puke before, and I really could have used some advice.  I did manage to puke in chocolate and vanilla swirls with chopped peanuts, but all I produced were broken blood vessels all over my forehead and around my eyes. 

So to top of being toothless, I looked like someone who’d take a few punches to the eyes.

I wasn’t going to go down without a fight though.  I’m an incredibly thrifty person, and I was determined that the tooth was not lost yet – after all it was still in my person.   For once I was happy that my wife was a plastic grocery bag pack rat, and I utilized perhaps 3 months worth of bags as a screening filter over the next few days.

I’ll leave you to your imagination.

To no avail, I never produced the tooth.  I’m either a terrible miner or the crown is still stuck in colon. 

Fast forward to last Monday.  I’d lived for weeks with a temporary, and actually adjusted quite well to the point that I really wasn’t lisping that much anymore.  But last Monday was a special day as I got my new tooth with about 6 hours to learn had to annunciate all over again before I’d stand before a crowd and speak in Fresno.