All the Wasted Time

And to think, I could have been smoking meth all this time.

All these years, the pull of crack and meth was strong, but the one thing that deterred me was that old thing they tell you about how your teeth fall out.

If I'd known that my teeth would just pop the fuck out of my mouth all on their own, I'd have picked up the pipe long ago.

So... You all might recall my previous post about my issues with my dentist (the aptly named "Crotchety Bastard" and my teeth.  It seems that despite all of the work the old coot put in on my one problem tooth, that low and behold he fucked it up, and suddenly... without pain or warning, my one-year-old crown just decided to rebel from my jaw and fling itself free from my mouth altogether.

Now, I don't mean to be all dramatic and whatnot, but let me just tell you that there is nothing quite so jarring as your teeth falling out with no inkling ahead of time. I think I'd prefer to be in a knife fight. At least that's a voluntary violation.

So there I was last week, getting settled in at work, when my crown pops the fuck out. I call the Old Crotchety Bastard to make an emergency appointment, and in what may turn out to be the most fortuitous happenstance of all, I come to find out that the OCB doesn't take my new employer's insurance. Glory-fucking-hallelujah. Finally, I have an excuse to leave that old mother fucking crotchety bastard.

Here’s where I find that almost everyone else on the planet freaking LOVES their dentist. I posted about my dental despair on Facebook, and got a dozen dentist recommendations within 2 hours. It was amazing.

I decided, after long and careful thought, to go with the TM’s dentist. Partly because she’s got no complaints. Partly because he had an appointment miraculously open THAT DAY, and partly because he DOES take my new insurance.

All that decided, off I head to my new tooth-man, with my old crown clickety-clacking around in a disposable condiment container, because I’m nothing if not classy. I could do nothing but keep my fingers crossed that the new guy wasn’t also some shriveled old coot with nothing better to do than to mouth-violate me.

Things started off promisingly enough… As I entered the office, I noted that his examining room was festooned. Not with the candid shots of the recently empained, but rather with framed news articles, autographed photos, and other commemorative material surrounding my beloved Cincinnati Reds. “This…”, I though to myself, “…is a good sign.”

I won’t accuse my new guy of a good bedside manner, because that would be false. He’s a younger guy, and tall and stocky, much like your very own Beefy Muchacho. He took a cursory look at the tooth in the plastic container, and then an even more cursory look at the gaping chasm in my mouth where said tooth once resided, and he said…

“You just got this put in a year ago?”

(Oh… I should pause here to mention that my new dentist sort of talks like Shaquille O’Neal does in interviews. All low resonance, and fast words, and hard to make out at first. So, picture Shaq saying this stuff to me while you’re reading. I have to admit that I found the notion that for the first time, the guy with the fingers in his mouth was the one who was easier to understand. )

Back to the conversation….

I replied, “Yeah, almost exactly.”

“Who? I mean… Who did this?”… I could sense the disgust in his voice. His deep, mumbly voice…

“Dr. Crotchety Coot Bastard, DDS… up in Coot Land.” (I’m paraphrasing here. )

“I don’t understand why… He should have known this would never last. I am surprised it lasted this long.

They don’t do it this way any more, because it just doesn’t last.”

This was, obviously, not what I wanted to hear… I really didn’t want to know that not only did the Old Crotchety Bastard have a less-than-light touch when it came to literally everything, he was using fucking antiques on me. Like… apparently just for fucking fun.

What would he have done with me had I stayed his patient forever? Would he have started shoving tooth-shaped pebbles into my mouth? Would he have asked me to pick up a good whittlin’ stick on the way over to his office, so he could “Carve me a chopper?”

Or maybe he’d go the other way, and just be all:

“You know, son… We seem to be having considerable trouble with this one tooth. I say we just yank-em all out. I’ve already got you fitted for the George Washington 5000 model dentures… Now lean back and listen all about how Mitt and I are old fishin’ buddies. This is gonna hurt!”

In about 10 seconds, my new dentist, who I’m going to call “The Big Orthodontal” or “The Big O” in honor of his Shaq tendencies, was able to tell me that The Old Coot had fitted me with a fucking bygone era war button or something, and now the real man was going to fix me all up. Only… it’s gonna take a few weeks to hear from my insurance company to see if they’ll cover the implant he’s gotta put into my jaw.

In the meantime, The Big O's plan was to just stick the old musket ball back into my mouth as a place holder. As he was reading the area, he kept making these mentions about how I need to be careful with it, or I could possibly knock it out in my sleep and choke on it.

As I was thinking about how I could possibly avoid doing something in my sleep, (especially after I asked him if I could use a bite guard, and he said no…), he took one final look at the bit of triceratops bone the Old Coot carved out for me, he tossed the idea and told me to just go Santorum (Toothless) while we waited.  There’s just too much risk that I could lose that fucking crown down my throat. Or, you know…  choke to death. Apparently in that order.

So, here I am. A toothless, grinning idiot. A yokel. And I have no crack., and this is pissing me off. 

More to come... I'm sure.