when i was a kid and my two front teeth fell out and the adult teeth weren’t growing in my dentist realized that I actually had 4 adult two front teeth. there should only have been 2 adult front teeth so the dentist refererred to this as shark teeth. my mouth was a pretty big mess at the time because in their impatience to get braces on me, they’d put the braces on without the two front teeth. they also had to pull out about 6 baby teeth because they refused to come out. a gross plastic tube went where the two front ones should have been and connected to the braces. the four adult two front teeth were all fighting for who was going to be the front two, and it seemed that none of them were showing up. eventually they referred little 4th grade me to an oral surgeon who was to do an operation to remove the extra teeth. my dad took the day off of work and brought me to the doctor. they let me hold a stuffed pound puppy dog for the operation which i was really excited about because my parents were really against “fad” type name brand toys. then they gave me a huge dose of laughing gas which is probably the first time i ever tripped on anything. i rememeber if being fantastically horrifying. the gas made me think vampire like chamber music was playing in the tooth operating room. i thought that the nurse was laughing maniacally over the decision to kill me or not. but by fourth grade operations were old hat since i’d already had eye surgery and been a guinea pig for the early lyme disease research. i toughed out the crazy tripping laughing gas experience and made it out of there alive. my dad took me out to ihop afterwards because he’d forgotten i probably couldn’t eat anything. i had a milkshake and then we went home where i slowly came out of my fog and watched the movie Captain Ron staring Kurt Russell and Martin Short. its still one of my favorite movies. the two front teeth came in shortly after which was cool because i’d just started a new school and the plastic tube in front of my mouth was really killing my social life.
Caitlin MacBride, 26, NY
