Teeth

How I Straightened My Own Teeth

My bottom teeth are so crowded and crooked that:

• They have been described as little gravestones in an old cemetery.

• Someone asked me if I chewed rocks as a child.

• I smile with my eyebrows.

My top teeth are pretty straight because of an incident in fifth grade.

Growing up, I did not do homework.

Of course, I’m not advocating this as an educational method, just saying I didn’t ever do it.

Kids, do your homework!

You could say that I get distracted pretty easily. Squirrel….

With three younger siblings at home and basically raising them by myself…

     Okay, that never happened.

There seriously just wasn’t anything that would make me interested in doing school work at home.

I am 97% positive I got out of high school through the mercy pass program.

This is where the teachers could tell that I had half a brain, but that I just would not apply myself so they gave me a D to keep me from staying in their class.

Anyone else there with me?

There were so many other options involving fun stuff:

• Playing tag or hide and seek with the neighbors. To this day I still wonder if anyone has ever figured out the meaning of the saying, “Olly Olly Oxen Free.”

• Adventures in the woods. You know top secret, special operations, black ops, backyard combat missions.

• Playing ATARI. Galaga forever! Pew, pew, pew…Ouch! Fire button thumb cramp!

Galaga

• Ninja training or practicing using “The Force” depending on the need or situation, of course.

• Intergalactic star-ship velocity and collision testing. AKA Lego smashing.

Needless to say, I did not make the time for such trivialities as homework.

What does this have to do with my teeth you ask? I’m getting there.

So when my 5th grade teacher announced that, “Today is the day your science notebooks are due to be turned in to me….” I panicked.

How could she do this to me?

Where was the warning?

“You have had three months to get all of your assignments done and so I will just come around and pick them up.”

Oh, that notebook. As I took mine out and thumbed through it, I could see that it was nowhere near ready to be turned in.

Notebook

I looked up towards the front of the room and through the perfectly lined rows of desks I could see that she was making her way down the aisle and getting closer to me by the second.

It felt like the movie scenes where an actor is fumbling for the keys to his car as the crazy serial killer makes his way toward the actor and is just inches from reaching his victim.

Using my ninja skills in this situation would expose my secret identity, too many witnesses. Using “The Force” wouldn’t work either because, I hate to admit it, but I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it, yet.

Jedi

 I needed a plan.

Think fast, think fast….

I had recently discovered the art of pulling teeth. My siblings were constantly needing loose ones removed. I had an idea.

My hand shot up, and I exclaimed, “I have a loose tooth.”

The teacher told me I could go to the bathroom. Maybe while I was in there she would forget about the notebook.

As I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, a problem presented itself.

There were no loose teeth in my mouth.

If I did not return to the classroom with any evidence, things would not go well.

So I started working on one of the top teeth on the left side of my mouth.

I wiggled and wiggled until I thought I felt some movement. Kind of like taking a paper clip and working it back and forth until it gets soft and snaps.

I’ll never really know medically if that tooth was on the verge of being ready or not but I got that thing to move. A few minutes later, I heard a crack and the tooth popped out.

Tooth

Whoa.

Taking a paper towel from the dispenser, I plugged the hole up, grabbed my trophy tooth and headed back class.

If you replayed the cameras that day, you might see a video of me skipping all the way to my room. It was too hard to contain myself out of pride. I couldn’t believe my resourcefulness and averting a potentially embarrassing situation.

Beaming with excitement, I threw the classroom door open like a scene out of “Return of the King.”

Approaching the teacher’s desk with one hand jutted out to show the prized tooth and the other hand pointing at the bloody socket where the tooth used to live, I exclaimed,

“I got it.”

She said, “That’s great, David, now go back to your desk and bring me your notebook….”

NooOOOoooo…….!

Unfortunately, I got a really bad grade, but was allowed a little extra time to go back through and do the work….

In my own time.

At home.

Oh, and as for the tooth?

Well, let’s just say that my efforts actually saved me from years of orthodontics.

It seems that the rest of my teeth shifted to fill in the space leaving the only place for the new tooth to come in on the roof of my mouth.

Once I had that pulled in high school, my top row was perfect.

And, honestly, that impressive feat was all because of a fifth grade science notebook!

Tell me about a time that you did something dumb, to get out something else you did that was stupid.

 How I Straightened My Own Teeth. (Click to Tweet)