Where Are My Teeth?

"You don't look like a knife person"

was what my dentist said when I came back this afternoon to retrieve the swiss army knife that had fallen onto the operating chair while she was hacking away at my upper jaw a few hours earlier. What does a knife person look like? (Somewhere I may still have the negative for a portrait I took of a friend in high school all done up with his mirror shades and twin hunting blades; he left college after three or four months and joined the marines. I learned from our alumni database that he now lives in Colorado, and that his first name, contrary what I thought I knew at the time, is M.) When I think of a knife person, I think of the kind of person who likes this kind of stuff.

But I'm the kind of knife person who uses a swiss army knife on a regular basis. I've tweezed with the tweezers, opened dozens or hundreds of cans and bottles, sawed plywood and dowels, turned uncounted screws both phillips and standard. The day a co-worker came into the office with a glasses screwdriver that spirals down into the corkscrew I could think of nothing but pestering her till she told me where she got it.

(I come by this predilection naturally. 30 years ago my mother, on a short airplane hop from japan to korea, discomfited a luggage inspector no end when she kept pulling prohibited items out of her handbag -- knife, scissors, knitting needle, pliers... -- until at last he just asked her not to take any of it out during the flight.)

Anyway, the swiss army knife fell out of my pocket (whence it came to the attention of the next patient) during the hour or so while I was getting two upper right fillings replaced, a process that seemed to require dislocating the left side of my jaw and spraining most of the muscles in my face.

Once a month, the whole office orders in for lunch (my dentist and her assistant ordered calzone verdi) and I'm afraid I made them both late to the feast.

But I did find out some interesting things about Mountain Dew: On the one hand it's the only thing that clears up some people's really bad headaches. (With more caffeine than many cups of coffee plus 11 level teaspoons of sugar you can understand why a can might pep you up.) On the other, it's quite possibly the most tooth-hostile foodstuff in the western world -- in addition to staining teeth green, my dentist says, it's cited by name in dental continuing-ed classes. One patient who drank the vile stuff in college was a tedious windfall, she recalls: every single tooth required major work, rotted down to the gum line.

She and her assistant speculated on why this should be so and I suggested (insofar as I could add to the discussion with two handsworth of dental implements in my mouth) that it might be due to the vegetable oil (brominated, for what that's worth) that gives the stuff that unmistakable extra mouthfeel. Most sugars and acids have to rely on bacteria to create a biofilm that holds them in contact with tooth enamel, but Dew carries its own slime layer conveniently packaged with the sugar and phosphoric acid.

As I was on my way out, the receptionist apologized for not being able to schedule my next appointment -- there are plenty more teeth to jackhammer, but until my dentist decides which one is next, there's no telling how long a time slot she'll need. (Still no decision when I came back at the end of the day for my knife, but I did get a fine round of greetings from everyone. Made me feel almost like a member of the family.)

Posted by wallich at May 27, 2004 04:06 PM