The twice-lost tooth, Ed Sullivan’s laughing man, and perseverance

Sometimes you just have to persevere, keep moving, and wrestle the Gods of Chaos to the ground rather than go back to bed.

It’s pathetic how a little thing can bring me down. Know what I mean? Like this morning when I lost that plastic, false tooth the World’s Best Dentist had made for me, oh, about two years, maybe three years ago – quite a while, anyway. It was supposed to be temporary, until I was ready to spend enough money to buy a used pick-up to equip my mouth with a single-tooth bridge. The temporary front tooth has sufficed, thank you, though it was pricey enough in its own right.

This morning wasn’t the first time I’d lost it. Last summer I was picking corn and, as I do sometimes, eating the odd cob right-off-the-stalk raw. Don’t laugh; sweet corn is pretty tasty seconds after it’s picked. But removal of the false tooth is necessary to avoid breakage. Continue reading