{"id":3379,"date":"2024-11-15T15:45:10","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.janelaverick.com\/?p=3379"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:45:10","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:45:10","slug":"the-whole-tooth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janelaverick.com\/?p=3379","title":{"rendered":"The whole tooth."},"content":{"rendered":"

I should have known I couldn\u2019t get through the last ghastly six weeks without something going south.<\/font><\/p>\n

Well it nearly went south but I caught it in time.  It was a large chunk, about a quarter, of my wisdom tooth.  So, not as wise as I thought I was, boasting about how calmly I had dealt with everything, everywhere etc.<\/font><\/p>\n

I rang the dentist at exactly eight o clock, which is not difficult when you\u2019ve been awake since five and up at seven.  I was able to describe the problem clearly because this was before my tongue and cheek had swollen to fill the razor sharp gap.  The first available emergency appointment is Monday morning but they will ring me if someone forgets to go today, unlikely, I think, as pain is quite a memory stimulant, I find.<\/font><\/p>\n

I will either lose weight because I can\u2019t eat or gain it because I\u2019m living on chocolate.  I have quite lot of chocolate in the house to put out with the library, which I can do when the weather gets cold enough.  In the summer people pointedly put melted chocolate bars on top of the books, or knock on the door to give me a soggy handful.  However right now the needs of the one\u2026<\/font><\/p>\n

The Romans did have dentists and toothbrushes made from frayed sticks but they didn\u2019t have as much sugar as we have.  Their dental skills lapsed with the decline of the Roman Empire and by the time we get to Elizabethans, cane sugar, honey, syllabub and trifle, suddenly everyone was a fan of fans to hide your black teeth.  Queen Elizabeth the First had famously awful teeth, which is why she is always close-mouthed in portraits and in later ones you can see her face collapsing as she loses teeth.<\/font><\/p>\n

In South Shields, where I grew up, people awaited the arrival of the black man.  He came to the town once or twice a year and was known for his strong fingers with which he could pull out bad teeth.  He would set up in the market with a wooden chair and quickly attracted a line of patients.  This continued from Victorian times, presumably with several black men, rather than one hundred year old one, until after the Second World War.  I had an uncle who was a dentist, trained in the army.  He had one of those very Forties-looking painted wood dental cabinets in cream with metal handles.  He used to put down the cigarette while he mixed up the amalgam but have a quick draw before he popped it on the tooth.  So I associate dentistry with ashtrays but still smoked as a teenager.  To be fair, rebelling but somewhat repelled, it took a while to get to cigarettes, at first I smoked a pipe with herbal tobacco on the bus, upstairs on the way home from school.  I think I was hoping it would make me thin and sophisticated, which just goes to show you how stupid some teenagers can be.<\/font><\/p>\n

This, of course, is why you get fatter as you get older.  Evolution assumes you\u2019ll be living on gruel, unhelpful to the tribe as you cannot soften the leather for clothing by chewing it, and therefore, although you get a menopause to help you raise the grandchildren, it makes you fat at the same time, so you can live off your gigantic stomach while chasing children running away from dinosaurs. <\/font><\/p>\n

I would write a letter to evolution to bring it up to date but it already decided not to bother with my third set of teeth, which is why I have a massive, now broken, partially erupted, wisdom tooth.<\/font><\/p>\n

In another million years we\u2019ll all have evolved to live off car fumes and be seven feet tall and quite spindly, which, as Earth survivors living in a bubble on Mars will all be a bit pointless.  <\/font><\/p>\n

Progress in modern life is like the egg and spoon race at school, in that it never really catches up with itself, so that you just know that winners, like the incoming American administration, have had their finger on the egg, all along.<\/font><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I should have known I couldn\u2019t get through the last ghastly six weeks without something going south. Well it nearly went south but I caught it in time.  It was a large chunk, about a quarter, of my wisdom tooth.  … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[1118],"class_list":["post-3379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-artists","tag-dentistry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t