No More Cavities, Ever ©

I want to thank all of you for the comments you left on the post below and I want to thank Elisa for the email telling me a little more about whom Suri was.
Looking at the pictures I received with the email, I could see the kind soul she possessed just by looking into Suri’s eyes.
I hope her family will find some comfort knowing her warm smile will be shining down on them as they walk through their lives.
Most of my life I have dealt with the death of family and friends.
I know it’s a natural progression of life but when I see someone so young die it bothers , even more so when it’s infant children, to have life stolen away before it could be lived.
We believe that the death of one we love brings life to those who remain living and I am sure the memories of Suri will bring life to those that knew her.

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Wednesday January 17 2007
I don’t really need to tell you that do I; it says it right up there above my post title.
It’s amazing how blogger knows what I am going to write it just doesn’t like letting me post it all the time.

Thirty-five years ago my parents took the plunge.
No they didn’t get married the got dentures together.
They were only going to get one pair but my mother didn’t think she could get her mouth around something my father would need to fill his big mouth and something small enough for her, he’d probably swallow by mistake so they each would need their own.

My parents as many other people their age had bad teeth manly because of the conditions they grew up in when they were young.
Malnutrition, lack of proper vitamins and the fact that a toothpick was their version of a toothbrush back then contributed to the predicament.
But the prospect of having teeth was real big to them.

Over the years the dentures have taken a beating and my father's in particular.
Last week my father passed out in his chair and my three year old niece came to me to point out that Papou's mouth was falling off of his face and looking over, his top denture had fallen and was half in, half out.
That was it, the next day I called a friend and made an appointment for my father.
I went next door and told him on Tuesday he was going to the denturist, he said no but I said yes and that was that.
I have to deal with his BS when the shit hits the fan and one day when they break I will pay for it, so we are going NOW!!!!!
Ummm that’s what I told him, you guys could relax.

D-Day, I crawl out of bed somehow and go brush my teeth while staring at the corpse in the mirror.
I got dressed and loaded the old man in the Jeep complaining the whole way.
In some way I can understand him.
Six years earlier he went to see about getting the bottom ones fixed and they told him $1200 for a new set, $500 for the bottom ones only.
I don’t know what he did but I know he’s had teeth since then so he must have had them fixed at least.

All the way there he complained about not being ready to get new ones.
Not ready, the man will be eighty next year what’s he got to get ready for?
I told him I know this guy and he won’t charge him that much.
He said he didn’t trust the people I know because most of them were shady and I was probably taking him to a horse dentist.
Yeah well........ I don't know any.
I pulled into the parking lot at the denturist’s office and walked in and up to the front desk.
There was a nurse with short blonde hair behind the reception desk wearing a white nurses outfit that was way to small for her boobs and at the end was another nurse with black hair and her uniform was just barely covering her pussy.
They gave us a form to fill and sent us to the waiting room.
The old man looked at me and asked if this was a dentist’s office or a brothel.
I was thinking that right about then myself.
I filled in the form and handed it back at the desk.
We didn’t sit there long before Dr W came in and asked us to follow him.
My father wanted to take off his coat so he handed me this bunch of rolled up tissue while he hung up his coat.
I looked at the tissue and I could feel something in it.
Naw it can’t be.
I asked him what was in it………..
FUCK!!!!!!!!!
It was his dentures.

We followed the doctor into his room and he asked my father to sit in the dentist’s chair.
He read over the form and then introduced himself to my father and asked him to open his mouth.
The whole time he was looking at my father’s gums he was yakking away non-stop.
He was a freaking chatterbox and my father doesn’t speak English that well or could understand what he was telling him and asking him to do.
The end result was the doctor having a tug of war with my father’s upper lip because the old guy refused to relax the thing when the doctor asked him to.
I was sure the doc was going to start slapping him around to tenderize it a bit.
After about fifteen minutes of me trying to explain to my father what the doctor wanted and the doctor seeing what he needed to see, the doctor asked for my father’s dentures.
My father passed over the ball of tissue to the doctor.
Taking them out of the tissue the dentist looked at them and asked my father if he actually ate with them.
My father said yes.
The doctor stuck them out under my nose and told me to look at them.
Fuck they were so close to me face I could wear them.
The dentist was pointing at this huge blob of crazy glue holding both halves of the broken denture together and they weren’t even aligned.
The dentist couldn’t understand how it held together and when he heard that he did it six years earlier he was stunned.
I asked Dr W how much a new set would cost and he said about $1250.
I told my father and I could see it in his face it wasn’t something he wanted to do, but there was no choice and I had the car keys.
In the hallway I asked if the old ones could be repaired.
He said yes they could; he could remove what my father had done and add new plastic to make them like new.
He also said he could cut the top ones to make them fit better.
When I asked him how much he said $45.
I said cool, do it.
He took them to the back someplace and I sat there with the old man
He asked me what the doctor said and I told him that he knows he used crazy glue and that he was lucky that something more serious didn’t happen to his mouth.
While the doctor was gone he asked me why the doctor talks so much and so fast for.
I told him it was probably because he did too much of his own drugs and can’t stop talking.
My father said I was just joking with him.
I told him he could think that way if he liked while he sat there in the dentist’s chair staring at the large drill sitting in front of him and to remember, he was one of my shady friends.
He went quiet all of a sudden, probably having visions of a crazed drugged out denturist with a long drill coming at him.
After a bit he asked about his dentures and I told him it was all being taken care of as we spoke.
He asked me how much it would cost but I told him I would deal with it after the denturist is done.
About forty minutes later Dr W walked in with a set of dentures in his hand and put them on the tray in front of my father.
My father looked at them and the said that they were new dentures and was amazed that this dentist could make new dentures that fast.
My father couldn’t tell these were his old ones because they were fixed and cut to fix the way his mouth is now.
The doctor put them in and had him bite down on a paper that left red marks on the whites of the dentures to tell him where to grind off a bit.
This went on for about tem minutes until the doctor was happy.
Then he put the dentures in my father’s mouth and asked him if they were loose.
My father said no they were perfect.
The doctor asked him again and my father said no they were snug.
Well what happened next went so fast I barely saw it.
The doctor’s hand shot out and three fingers went into my fathers mouth as he was sitting in the chair with it wide open and came out with my father’s dentures. They looked like they were chewing the doctor’s hand.
My father stared in shock at the doctor; he looked like a big guppy without his teeth sitting there in the chair, I almost pissed myself laughing.
Dr W looked at him and said they weren’t so snug after all were they.
My father just said no.
After some more grinding, tugging they were a good fit and both my father and the denturist, were happy.
We then got up and went to the desk, I told my father he was going to need his credit card and I could see the fear growing in his eyes.
The doctor said $45.
My father looked at him and then me.
He asked if it was right and Dr W was willing to add more but my father shoved his credit card forward.

On the way home my father wouldn’t shut up.
He kept saying he couldn’t believe dentures were so cheap now; he paid $800 for his almost 35 years ago.
He had the visor down and was smiling at the mirror looking at his new choppers.

I dropped him off at the front door and went to park the Jeep in the back.
First I went into my place to get undressed and then went through the back into their house to see what was for lunch.
As some as I walked in my mother was all over me about the $45 dentures and how she wanted me to take her next.
My father was sitting in his lazy boy smiling into a hand held mirror admiring his new look.
I filled a bowl of soup and sat down at the table.
He said they were nice and that he wanted to get buried with them.
My mother said she wanted me to call the denturist after I ate and to make an appointment for her.
I told her that I would and told my father they don’t bury you with your dentures.
But he insisted on it.
I told him they don’t because they donate the dentures to those who can’t afford new ones or are to cheap to buy new ones and sell them for $45.
The room went silent until my mother said she didn’t want me to make her an appointment.
My father would have said something but he was to busy trying to yank his teeth out of his mouth.

I finished my soup.

Have a nice day

Walker