A bridge too far

Or at least very late

(Published on January 21, 2017 in Business Standard)

Everyone will tell you: It’s important to make a good impression. The world treats you better if you dress well, speak well, don’t smell, are punctual and reliable, and don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Boy, has that ship sailed. I once made a half-hearted attempt to catch up with it by buying new jeans, but some doors never reopen. The only good impression I make is on the putty that dentists use to make dental moulds.

In a December 2006 instalment of this column, I promised not to write any more columns about my teeth. But that was ten years ago, and maybe I lied; plus, there’s been a development. 

To recap, so to speak: Ten years ago, both my front teeth were yanked out as the grand finale of a long comet tail of dental events—caps, pins, bridges and really gross gum surgery—rooted, if you will, in a childhood accident that was totally not my cousin’s fault, though I’m always open to receiving nice presents from her. Long story short, I ended up with a temporary denture. My dentist told me to come back a few weeks later for a permanent bridge, but I’m lazy, and was traumatised, and, really, ten years fly by.

I don’t mind the denture; I enjoy dropping my teeth at kiddy parties, and select adult parties, and listening to the screaming. It’s probably genetic—it seems that my grandfather also dropped his dentures at passing children, and when the parents turned to see what made their kid cry, there was only a sweet old gentleman, reading his newspaper and minding his own business. It’s practically family tradition. 

But all good things must come to an end. It turns out that when there is space in the jaw, teeth begin to roam, like the ruthless white colonisers of North America. Mine (teeth, not ruthless white colonisers of North America) are striking out. So this week I decided that it was time to arrest the joyful pirouetting of my lateral incisors, and get some permanent teeth.

Here’s how they make a bridge for your front teeth. The dentist sticks a needle into a seriously tender part of your face while you twitch like a pinioned insect. When you’re numb from your eyebrows to about the middle of your chest, he drills your lateral incisors for half an hour, whittling them down to thin little sticks. These are so hilarious that you want to post them on Facebook. But your only job is to cry, moo piteously, and flail because your throat is filled with water, and your nostrils are numb, and you can’t breathe. This last move draws censure from the dental team, who tell dark tales of drills nicking lips and hands caught in wires. Then they fashion temporary caps and cement them onto the hilarious little sticks, put the denture back in, and tell you to come back in a week to fit a permanent bridge.

So now I’m walking around the world with two fake caps gleaming out of my face like rakshas tusks or, as I like to think of them, beacons of hope that it won’t be another ten years before I go back. Until then, I have to eat softish foods, because if these puppies fall off, we’re back to hilarious little sticks. 

But I’m not really worried about looking ridiculous, because ridiculous just raised the bar a lot higher by swearing in Donald Trump as POTUS this Friday. Who can beat that? We should all brace ourselves, as they say. Because there’s a man, if ever there was one, who’s got a bridge to sell you.