Lori Sweeney
“I don’t have false teeth. Do you think I’d buy teeth like these?”
~Carol Burnett
The pearly whites. At my age, like Carol, I’m glad to still have them, given what I’ve invested in their maintenance. Yet, of late, I seem to be finding more and more stuff stuck in my teeth. It’s like those ridiculous bugs dying by the thousands in our windowsills: embarrassingly evident. Who hasn’t had a piece of lettuce from lunch that is still stuck up there between your gum and lip, or, worse, in between your teeth? Stuck fast like the squirrel that got caught in our empty cylinder of a bird feeder. Flailing to get out. (We have a picture of this – the squirrel, not the lettuce.)
And hey, I floss. I am one of those who was shocked into flossing in my 20s by a fiery dentist who threatened that I would lose all my beautifully straight teeth. He was cute and fiery, so I became a BELIEVER right then and there. I even perfected a technique of subtly asking my dates if they flossed or not; I would not kiss them goodnight if they didn’t have good dental hygiene. This may be one reason I didn’t marry until I was 36.
But it was an important question to ask. Gums count.
Growing up, I could not understand the proliferation of toothpicks in restaurants like Denny’s. And then recently I had a Chinese chicken salad with sesame seeds. Evidently those seeds lodged in my pearlies right across the front, like ebony on ivory. And I didn’t know it. Went through the whole day and not a person said a word (what is with that? hello! take the plunge and whisper “honey, you have something the size of Gibraltar in your teeth and, and you need to swish and swallow”). Geez, now I carry toothpicks AND a floss card and yes, I take an immediate gander in the rear view mirror the minute I get in the car, like everybody else over 60.
THEN, I began to wonder about whitening. Talk about does she or doesn’t she. But unlike with my gray hair, I decided to go first class. Thanks to the influence of another cute dentist, I had trays made and fill them with some goop every quarter and wear them around like night cream, talking with what I imagine is a pretty sexy lisp, sort of like Lauren Hutton. I do this religiously every quarter, right after getting my 401(k) statement. Whiter teeth and good retirement savings, that’s my motto.
Because of these good habits, we are all going to have our teeth longer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is going to be a shortage of dentists to take care of all these teeth we own. You think social security is a problem. Try finding a dentist when we’re 85.
I tell you it’s enough to make one think about skipping the flossing while camping, but then I think, with my high standards, what if I also need a date when I’m 85?
Lori Sweeney is a new full-time resident to High Prairie and will be the first to tell you if you have something in your teeth.