View from the North 40: Reality check, right in the chompers

I broke a significantly sized corner off a front tooth when I was 10 years old.

Sorry to make you cringe right out of the gate.

I was at the public swimming pool and as I was getting out of the water my hands slipped off the gutter. I slammed my mouth into the cement.

It could have been worse, but I still remember looking in the mirror, choking back tears and the sickness in my gut. I was sure I was going to look wretched and stupid for the rest of my life.

I was 10.

I didn’t know about filling material that looked just like tooth enamel. I could only believe I was doomed to a life of disfigurement.

I’ve been reliving a bit of that trauma this week.

That filling and a chunk of my front tooth parted company with my mouth and I was left with a big, gaping, triangular hole the size of 1/3 of my tooth, right there. Front and center. On the face of my smile.

I could stick a pencil through that hole. I could store an entire ham in it.

I stood in front of the mirror staring at my mega-gap-toothed grin, with that horrid sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, again.

I could only believe that I am officially every stereotype of a hillbilly.

I’m doomed.

I might as well change my name to Bertha Jean Mayberry, get drunk on animal beer and marry my first cousin, then take up chewing beechnut wrestling pigs.

I wanted to cover my face with a scarf and hide in my home forever, or until I could get the tooth fixed, whichever came first.

I had too much to do at work the next day to take a sick day, so I just pitched my pride out into the slush and mud, trudged in to work and let my hick flag fly.

I got as much sympathy as I did looks of horror which, I thought, spoke highly of my co-workers.

(And I might now feel guilty about calling them losers to their faces. Frequently. Maybe.)

One of them suggested I fix the tooth with a piece of chiclet gum. I laughed on the outside.

Another one told me it looked kind of hot, but he’s from Georgia — on the fringes of Redneck Central — so that “compliment” was a zero to negative-10 comfort to me.

Later that day, I got a temporary crown.

I’m still mortified.

The temporary tooth is the size, color and shape of a chiclet. My co-worker was just seeing the future.

But this chiclet has, through some modern miracle, been both antique-stained and made fluorescent. Part of it looks like my tooth enamel and the rest is a brilliant — eye-catching — yellowish white.

The sweet dental assistant told me gently before I saw it: “When you see this temporary in certain light, it’s going to have a really bright spot because of the glue, but when you get your permanent crown it’s going to look like your other teeth.”

I might have gasped out loud when I saw it for the first time. I admit nothing.

Just as my lamenting and ill-at-ease feelings were reaching a fevered pitch that night, I took the time to listen to a National Public Radio “StoryCorps” interview with former Havre City Councilwoman Pam Hillery and her husband, Paul Tuss.

Hillery was talking about her life with the progressive nerve degeneration disease ALS and little things like maybe not living long enough to see her daughter graduate.

It was soulful, heart-wrenching, funny and humbling.

I was feeling a connection between our parallel lives ...

Right. Yes. I’m here. Moving on.

I sat their sniffling a bit, instead of getting a tissue, and contemplating life.

My only conclusion was if I’d been interviewed, NPR viewers would be sitting in front of their computers much like me — contemplating my words — but responding like the crew of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”

While I lamented my horrible disfigurement, the post-traumatic stress of reliving the sickening horror of my ruined looks and keen awareness that I would have to live the rest of my days — until my permanent cap gets here in two to three weeks — as the tooth-hag, the audience would be laughing, heckling me and throwing popcorn at the screne.

Perhaps there are worse things in life than a hillbilly tooth.

(Hear Hillery’s interview at https://storycorps.me/interviews/living-with-als-in-rural-montana/; talk it out at [email protected].)