Toothy Wisdom
I was in the kitchen wiggling my feet its usual wiggle. With one hand on my chin, I was contemplating how to start my day. I stared at my teacup at the table and observed the steam that wafted like a lazy flying cat and wondered at the scenery that those leaves could have seen in their brief lives as fresh buds upon a tree on a verdure hill in Indonesia. I reached for my second slice of bread that morning and with salivating anticipation, I took a huge bite. Ouch! My wisdom tooth punched a blow to my cheek. That day I knew I couldn’t postpone going to the dentist any longer, even if I wanted too. Badly. With much trepidation, I “SMS-ed” for help.
Who here loved their childhood dentists?
Well, I don’t. The memories I had with my childhood dentists weren’t pretty. My first dentist was the district school dentist who pricked my gums with the stinging numbing pain of an anaesthetic needle.
My second dentist was the town’s favourite who pulled one molar, hammered the other which caused it to nearly fall-off and was pulled some time later but not without its accompanying pain.
My quest for dental perfection composed mostly of what my Lola advised. My front teeth long ago weren’t as large as they are now. My childhood friends postulated that having large front teeth is caused by constantly touching them when they were still growing. But my front teeth were growing sideways. Lola said that I should push it to the right position. Faced with the conflicting advices of my friends and my dear Lola, I reminded myself that lolas know best. I ended up with near perfectly placed pair of incisors but they were double the size of its smaller neighbours. I guess they were right after all, both of them.
The most exciting memory involving dentures happened when I was a second grader.
A medical mission was sent to our school one day. A doctor, a dentist and some nurses were there. It was a rarity to see some people dressed in medical whites to go about our tiny barangay school. We were herded like sheep awed at the spectacle unfolding before our eyes and our palms began to sweat as we saw needles being pushed at our hapless classmates who were unfortunate to be first in line that morning.
I promised not to cry. I imagined the embarrassment I would suffer from the hands of my ever so loving classmates who would laugh at the whiff of anything out of the ordinary and would definitely call one names until eternity, which coincidentally would last until graduation (for us then, it was eternity).
Then one of my classmates began teasing me. He called me a gay which the lone male nurse overheard. He took my side and egged me to prove that I was a “lalake”. Back then I wasn’t aware that he was trying to impress his female companions by demonstrating his utterly deficient fathering skills and his misplaced sense of heroism. He said that I should punch him in the face for saying those nasty things. Being a dimwit that I was, I did what he told me. I curled my tiny fingers into a fist and hit my classmate’s sunburnt face. I felt the resistance of his skin and the painful impact of his cheekbone. That was the face that I punched for the very first time.
And my hero pulled me into his arms and told me that I should have not done that. He gave my classmate the biggest lollipop I have ever seen while he gave me a reproachful look. I was puzzled by his inconsistency; maybe I should have punched his face instead.
I caught a fever the following day. When I came back to school, the boy with the sunburnt face was not there. My other classmates told me that his grandmother was furious beyond consolation. I got a lashing from our teacher and suffered a silent treatment from almost all of the boys. I hoped my hero was there and own up to what he made me do.
Looking back that far has left my teacup cold. My left foot has tired itself of wiggling as I massaged the slowly fading pain of my wisdom tooth’s battle against my cheek. I know that the inevitable has made its final ultimatum. I’ll go to the lion’s den, the territory of my anonymous-white-clad hero who taught me the greatest lesson one should learn in life.
And it’s a secret.
ilocandiaprobe 