As a child I spent many a day riding around through the woods and roadways of my sleepy town where I grew up. During one of my days out when I was about 8 years old I was riding to the playground at a frenzied pace and came to the busy crossing of a main street. I crossed as fast as I could to avoid getting hit by a car which I was not always successful at that either but that is another story for another time. As I raced across the road I jumped off my bike to run it over on foot thinking this would be safer than actually riding it across.
Think again as I pushed my bike across to the curbside in this hurried fashion, the bike which was a pretty heavy bike for a scrawny little eight year old to be lugging around smacked the curbside popping it backwards hurling it’s metal right into my mouth. The handle bars hit hard knocking loose and chipping a big chunk of my front tooth. That really put a damper on my playground plans... I turned back around and drove home feeling broken with tears in my eyes.
Some months have passed and I ended up living with my chipped tooth self all the way till I was about 20 when I actually had it fixed. I fooled myself all those years before telling myself it was part of my quirky charm but really that was an accident that happened to me... It was not part of who I was or am it’s not like my sweet little bumped nose that I was born with or the funny freckles I have sprinkling my face or my two different shaped thumbs that I had since I was born. But all those years that I lived with it I had a history with it, drew self portraits of myself with it, told the story of how I got it and it was actually becoming part of my history of who I was and am. I was strangely proud of my deficiency. It made me unique and funny for that I liked it.
So my 8 year old chipped tooth dirt road bike riding princess that I was had herself a best friend back then who also had a bike. We rode around town together, climbed trees together and on one fateful day became chipped tooth twins together. On that very same roadway the very same exact way I lost part of my front tooth...so did Megan. Except this time was different because she had the support of some one who had been there to tell her it ain’t so bad and in fact this could be the coolest thing to happen to us. So with her eyes filled with tears I soothed her telling her I know what would make her feel better CANDY AND CUPCAKES!!!!
We then drove into town to the local sweet shop and bought as much junk as our coined filled pockets could. We then took our sweet tooth treasures and went to the playground where we gorged ourselves silly and decided we were cool because we now had a special best friend marker... A chipped tooth best friend club is way better than any dumb B.F.F. necklace! The day seemed to go in slow motion, it was warm, golden, perfect and fun till of course we went to Megan’s house where her father found out and grounded her for being so careless.
So now at 35 I have not dealt with my chipped tooth self since the fore-mentioned 20 year old self that had it fixed. Today I looked in the mirror to realize I have a chipped tooth again it’s tiny and almost unnoticeable but the beginnings of bigger crack to come... It’s part of my history it’s haunting me and I will have it fixed again but in the mean time I will have CANDY AND CUPCAKES and think of my childhood best friend who bears this marker too and probably fixed it as well but underneath the coatings it’s still there apart of you and I.
