Rambling Rhodes

It's a dental miracle!

Okay, this wasn't really a dental miracle. What actually happened was, a few months after my ninth grade picture was snapped, I was doing pull-ups right before wrestling practice started. The pull-up bars were mounted to the wall, which meant I had to face the wall to do pull-ups. Lining the walls of the wrestling room were these big green military-type bags, which were ironically in place to protect us from running into the walls during practice.

Well, one of my fellow wrestlers thought it would be funny to throw one of those large heavy pillows at my back, thereby making me smack my groin against the wall. Unfortunately, I dropped down from the pull-up bar just as the pillow was released, so the pillow hit the back of my head, and the transfer of momentum meant my face smashed into the wall.

So, all those years of waiting for my teeth to grow together were basically for nothing, as in that single moment, my right tooth was ejected from mouth just as I nearly went unconscious. The sight of my tooth bouncing off my arm woke me right up though. Well, that and the pain of having my tooth snapped off at the root.

What's in place in my mouth in this picture is basically a temporary denture. It was a most irritating device that took up the entire roof of my mouth, and attached to the plate was this single tooth. I had to pop the denture out every night and drop it in a cup with Polident. Yeah, I was real special.

Also, you probably noticed that my eyesight also went south in the previous year, necessitating glasses. As class pictures go, this one is actually pretty decent for me, particularly when you consider the following year. . .

Posted by Ryan at March 4, 2009 07:37 PM | TrackBack