PASSIONATE RATIONS

Let us pause for a moment to honor teeth, which allow us to eat foods of wide and varied textures, to smile without the word “maw” coming to mind. Without them we would be relegated to slurping mush with flapping lips, and what kind of life would that be?

I am very much focused on this because tomorrow I will be losing one of my teeth. It cracked in half Sunday and has grown increasingly excruciating. The dentist made clear to me that there is no option but extraction. Oh, how I appreciate my humble ivory servants today! Apparently, two others are also showing signs of cracking—a testament to the strength and duration of my nightly teeth grinding.

“On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the most intense grinding,” my dentist said, “you rate an eleven.”

So, it’s “adieu” to one pearly white and the crowning of two others. I wonder how they feel about rising to royalty so young? Alas, it will be me tithing the princely sum for those royal crowns.

But the crowning comes later. For tomorrow, I penned this brief, really terrible, elegy in remembrance of the first soldier down. A moment of silence please.

Goodbye number 5
I bid farewell
To your ivory enamel
Which Sunday fell
To the onslaught of a
Mocha Frappucino
And years of gnashing teeth.

I tried, number 5,
Keeping you well
With my flossing and brushing
But time did tell
That the onslaught of a
Mocha Frappucino
And years of gnashing teeth

Became your death knell.

So long, my friend.