The Horror Of Teeth

The day before I was moving to another state, we were cleaning out the fridge and we made a fridge-clean-out-cheese-plate. There were tomatoes, olives, pickles, cheese, and a variety of other things.

I took a bite of the cheese, and I felt something hard in it. I took the half masticated mess out of my mouth and examined it. Something was in the cheese. I peered at the yellow ball and realized I was looking at a human tooth.

I was instantly horrified. I had been watching a lot of horror movies leading up to this point, preparing for a totally unrelated project, and now I pulled a bite of cheese out of my mouth to find someone else's cheese colored tooth in my cheese.

I finally had proof that something sinister was happening! The horror movies weren't filling my head with completely fantastical anxieties. They were real! The proof was in the cheese.

Of course, while I was staring in shock at the cheese blob that contained another human's tooth, my subconscious was like, hey check your mouth, you idiot. And my tongue located the stub of a tooth that my crown had sat on until a few seconds before.

I felt a lot better about the evil situation in my house, and then I realized I had a logistical nightmare on my hands. I was moving in less than twenty-four hours, it was after five, and my dental work was crumbling. I briefly considered if I wished the tooth was actually someone else's.

But I was lucky. I woke up the next day, the final count down playing on repeat in my head, I and called the dentist upon their opening. They said they could fit me in at ten.

I arrived, got seated, they cleaned the crown, decided it was undamaged, then told me the dentist needed to see me. But, there was an issue.

"There's kind of a complicated case happening in the other room, and the dentist is very involved. I promise it shouldn't be an hour, but unfortunately you'll have a bit of a wait."

I was fine with it. The fact that they could probably fix my mouth on such short notice was awesome. I settled into wait.

Then I heard a man start to yell. He sounded older, and he was clearly mad.

"Listen up," he yelled. "I'm not paying thousands of dollars to you to keep doing this. You understand? If you don't pull ALL my teeth, I'm walking out of here and going to another dentist. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I will walk out of here."

To which a woman rapidly responded to him, so quickly I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I did hear her repeat, "I understand you're tired."

The man reiterated that he wanted all the teeth pulled, and I settled further into the chair.

Ultimately, he stormed out, and my crown got glued on. I ended up with more teeth than I started with, and he ended up with more teeth than he wanted.

I just hope to all that is holy that he doesn't start stashing his unwanted teeth in other people's cheese.