Gnaws: An Oral Adventure

When I went to mow the lawn last week I had trouble starting the mower; dust clogged the air filter and I had to clean it. I usually mow on Fridays but, since I was not sure if I’d need to work on the machine, I got started a day early this week.

Needn’t have worried; mower started on the first pull.

And of course as I cut grass, I thought about teeth.

Something I read on an e-friend’s blog reminded me about a Christian businessman’s seminar I attended back in the late 1950s.

I didn’t really belong at this seminar but I attended because I wanted to meet important people, network, make contacts, advance my career, brownnose and manipulate successful people so I could get ahead myself.

You know how it is at these Christian business seminars.

After the first lecture I mingled, searching for somebody who could do me good.

This seedy-looking guy approached me.

Smiling brightly, he said, “Jesus is wonderful, Isn’t He?”

His smile revealed a mouthful of broken or rotten teeth.

I wrote him off.

I nodded and made some innocuous response and gave the looser a cold shoulder. I mean this guy’s mouth was so messed up. One look at him and I dismissed him as being a person of no importance. Not worth my time.

I saw someone substantial-looking across the room and I hightailed it over there to join the circle of sycophants around the successful Christian businessman.

When the bad-mouth guy had said, “Jesus is wonderful, isn’t He’, my unspoken thought was, “Doesn’t look like He’s done much for you”.

And I shunned the man.

I eased away leaving him alone in the corner holding his Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand.

A Bible verse says, “Man looketh on the outward appearance; God looketh upon the heart”.

Not being a preacher, I’ll leave the part about what God does to the professionals, but I understand the part about man looking on the outward appearance.

We do.

That’s why we dress for success. That’s why you should dress for the job you want not the job you have. That’s why we follow the leader’s example when it comes to fashion. Because man does indeed look on our outward appearance.

Now fast forward about 30 years, to the mid-1980s:

My teeth ached. Years of neglecting basic dental hygiene resulted in my developing sever periodontal disease. I suffered excruciating pain. Being without either cash or insurance, I went to a charity hospital emergency room and was screened for a pilot dental care program. X-rays showed that several of my teeth actually grew parallel to the floor underneath the roots of other teeth. Several operations were necessary.

They’d render me unconscious and cut out handfuls of teeth at a time.

Again and again.

Over several months, they discovered that my head was so rotten that essentially there is no facial bone left above my mouth; nothing there to anchor false teeth to.

My face began to cave in.

Not nearly as pretty as I used to be.

“Jesus is wonderful, isn’t He?”

Funding for the pilot program ran out.

The hospital cancelled further treatment.

My remaining teeth ached like sin. One abscessed. I tried to find a dentist who would pull it. All wanted health insurance or cash money and I had neither.

In anguish and misery, I cried and prayed and cursed and despaired.

Remember the scene in the movie Castaway where Tom Hanks used the blade of the ice-skate?

No one in the audience cringed more than I did.

Because I remembered the agony of pulling one of my own teeth.

Yes, the pain overwhelmed me so I boiled a pair of pliers, washed my mouth out with Listerine, swallowed a handful of aspirin, and tried to pull that abscessed tooth myself.

I whimped out.

Couldn’t stand that pain.

Then the other kind of pain got so bad that I knew I had to try again.

I took me numerous tries over three days but I finally pulled that tooth.

This is a practice that neither the American Dental Association nor I would ever recommend to anybody!

So, the last state of the man was worse than the first.

But I survived.

I’m not as pretty as I once was what with no teeth, no denture, no bones, and a caved in face, but I survived.

There are words I can’t for the life of me pronounce anymore, but I survived.

I don’t care to be seen eating in public, but I survived.

I avoid ever smiling at anyone, but I survived.

I drool, but I survived.

Worst of all, when I kiss Ginny, my mouth goes all spongy, but I survive.

To show their love and support, my then-teenaged children went to a silk-screen artist and had a special tee-shirt made for me. It shows a comic rendering of the shark of movie fame but it is toothless and the caption reads GNAWS!

Although the Scripture says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged”, somehow I don’t believe that God indulges in cruel payback, that He’s punishing me for shunning that man at the seminar… Yet hardly ever do I brush my few remaining teeth that I don’t remember the look on that guy’s face when I walked away leaving him in the corner holding his Styrofoam coffee cup.

Alone.

Ignored.

Shunned.

Is this blog just a pity party, or do I have a message to convey here?

Do I really have something important to say?

Is there some point to my rambling post?

Yes, there is.

What I want to say is this:

Jesus is wonderful.

Isn’t He?