the two front teeth
As a parent to multiple children, my mom mastered the diplomatic answers when faced with comparisons. Which do you like better? “Umm they’re both nice in their own ways.” Who’s your favorite child? “I don’t have favorites.”(It’s my younger sister). Also, as the asshole middle child, I often found solutions to this attempted diplomacy. Simple solutions included times I’d take my sister’s art and my own, telling my mom they were both mine (she favored mine). Neither were pleased when I revealed the truth.
Now how does this relate to dental records? All too well. It started with incident #129384 of me being the instigator middle child. In this case I’d openly brag to my two braces-adorned siblings about having naturally straight teeth. (Plot twist: due to dentist personnel and opinion changes, I would have the karma of getting braces in high school for years.)
And yet the Diplomat would always tell us “all our teeth were equally beautiful in their own ways.” Okay. Sure. There were traits of my sisters I admitted were better than mine. For one, her personality.
However, one fateful night that all came to a test. Since we are a family with excellent timing, my sister and brother decided to play around near granite countertops in my dad’s paper-covered office the day before Thanksgiving. Two energetic kids in small room full of tripping hazards? What could happen? Specifically, two surgeries, a rush to the emergency room, and suddenly a very timely new meaning to the song “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.”
Lost in my dad’s office, besides my mom’s sanity, was half of my sister’s two front teeth. For once the chaos in the house had nothing to do with me. However, soon it would in ways for years I’d live in blissful ignorance of.
My sister eventually got surgeries to add and sand down fake teeth. Within weeks she was back to a nice smile. I will say that as time passed I did notice similarities between our smiles, but I just figured there was something known as genetics at play.
Little did I know, a diplomatic discussion went down at the dentist. It wasn’t until I returned to this same dastardly place for my first cavity filling that my mom lectured me, telling me I had great teeth or she wouldn’t have chosen them for Maggie and that I needed to take care of them.
It was an interesting amalgamation of facts to say if she thought my main takeaway was going to be about dental hygiene. In shock, I asked what she meant and she revealed how when adding the fake teeth, my mom had requested that the dentist use my dental records as a model for her two front teeth.
“SO YOU DO HAVE FAVORITES. I KNEW IT”
“What are you talking about? It’s teeth.”
“Yeah, but you like mine the best.”
“Well… you inherited my teeth. They’re great teeth.”
And thus, the Diplomat spoke. Was it favoritism or narcissism? Or perhaps a bit of both. Either way, while some might say we’re made in God’s image, I can say with absolute certainty that my sister’s two front teeth were made in mine.
My ego has never been the same since.
