Jeremiah's School of Levitation

We got a little leak in the safety valve yesterday that started with a call to my work from my wife. The call began with her frantic voice saying: "I just got a call from Oldest Son's school. They said he's broken..."

Now, you don't know how long a split second can actually be until you get trapped in a real gripping split second. When I heard the words "he's broken..." the split second between the word "broken" and the phrase that described what he'd actually broken lasted a lot longer than a split. Like Roger Waters said, it's like "the moment when the brakes lock, and you slide toward the big truck: you stretch the frozen moments with your fear."

And, that's what I did. My brain, in that moment, went ahead and stretched the moment and proceeded to fill in the blank space after the word "broken". My mind filled that blank space with the words "leg", and "arm," and then "nose," followed by "ribs" "back" and "skull." You can imagine my panic. My mouth tasted like foil.

Thank the diety of your choice that a split second is only a split of a second and, therefore, you can only torture yourself for so long.

The phrase that my wife actually came out with was "his front teeth." Which, of course, didn't calm me one bit.

Apparently, the Oldest got into a playful shoving match in the school bathroom. One shove caught him off balance and he went headfirst into the wall. Suddenly gone was half of both of his PERMANENT front teeth.

Of course, I cursed like a drunken Nick Nolte when I heard the news. I cursed the alternative school that the Oldest attends which allows the kids more freedom than I had in all my years of elementary school combined. In my day, we went to no bathroom without a hall pass and we rough-housed in no halls without a hall monitor flicking his/her forked tongue at us and threatening the fires of hell. But, at this alternative institution of the Oldest's, the kids are allowed to run the joint, almost. They can up and go to the bathroom at any time, even in groups of raucous boys, which, in 5th grade, is just like turning raving drunks loose in a liquor store.

So, now, the Oldest has one tooth capped, and the other with the fallen chip reattached. For the rest of his life, he needs to be aware of what he's biting into. At age 11, he's been handed a lifetime WARNING label. Damn.

The Youngest son actually cried for him, saying that it was really sad that the Oldest couldn't eat corn or apples anymore. It's not that drastic, but to the Youngest, it is. Just this very evening, the Youngest had a baseball batting cage outing with his baseball team. The outing included pizza. Oldest was there and he got a slice of pizza, but when he found out that there were no knives and forks to cut the pizza into little tiny peices, he got depressed. And, Youngest got depressed too. Oldest just wanted to go home and Youngest cried because his older brother was not the same he was yesterday. Daddy bit his lip to keep from joining the tear parade.

I'm going to keep up with my safety lectures, my "keep your hands offa other people and that'll take you through most of your life without trouble" admonishments and I'm going to be a hard ass about it all, but, in the end, I'm going to have to go to damn work, which means I can't be there to do the Obi Wan Kenobi thing and remind the boys from thin air to obey my rules. And, so, then I'm relegated to the fear of getting "the call from the nurse", in spite of all my efforts.

Well, it could be worse. It was only his teeth. But, damn, his teeth. For the rest of his life, he's got to consider his teeth. He's got to look at a piece of food and wonder if biting into it will ruin his day.

But, okay, it could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse. All together now...

It could be worse. It could have been his spine, or his skull. But still, I hear ya. I'm FreakOutMom Numero Uno.

The teeth suck, I've been there. My younger sister smashed a glass mason jar across my two front teeth (filled with Creepy Crawlies)when I was about 10 and chipped the bottom and front of both teeth, sheared them off a bit. The dentist could only help so much, and I lived my adolescence with yellowish patches on my white teeth. Adulthood and dental insurance has given me white teeth, but I still freak out when the kids reach for a glass jar of any kind.

When the caller id on my work phone indicates it's the school secretary, my chick-nads crawl up into my belly, it's NOT a pleasant feeling. Last time this happened was on Crazy Hair Day, and it was just Boy-Child asking if his friend's dad could turn his hair blue. Whew! Yeah!

wow, that's a drag... I got s queezy stomach just from reading those first paragraphs!

but thankfully it was not something worse...

oh what a drag man...

Kate's recent lp is good, have you heard it?

Everytime my daughters day care provider calls during the day, my heart skipps a beat, and I'm just sure she'll need stitches or something. So far, so good. No major injuries...
My little brother caught a rock in the face last year at school-from someone else's fight, not even his- and now has a capped front tooth.
Pissed us off to no end, as he didn't see who threw it, and no one was 'fessing.

OK, Jeremiah, time to suck it up, baby. Life does not end because you have an anterior crown. If I sound like I know what I am talking about, it's because I do.

I smashed mine when I was eight. I had "kiddie crowns" every couple of years until I got the permanent one put on at 16. (It's almost due for a replacement, actually, but given the student budget, I may pass the hat and ask for it as a grad gift!)

Anyway, just for the record, I eat apples, toffee (but not often), gum, steak (mmmm... steak!) and basically, whatever the hell I please. He'll get used to it.

So will you. ;-)

Mona: I hate calls from the school. One time, they called me and said that my son had brought a knife to school and to come pick him up. I rushed there, with all sorts of harsh lecture notes in my head and, when I got there, it wasn't my son at all. They'd got the kid's name right, but called the wrong parent! Jeez. Boy, did I yell.

iPod: I'll go sink my teeth into Kate's new one. Hee hee.

Ariel: Woo, a stray rock. Now that really sucks. If I'm going to be injured, I'd at least want to be involved in the dang thing.

S: Good to hear from a Veteran of the Chipped Tooth Wars. Yeah, I know it will probably be okay--we've already had the "workaround" conversation, but, it really is a shock now--kind of hard to dismiss it. But, if nothing else, I want my boy to be able to eat big slabs of meat like hiz dad, so thanks for the assurance that he'll be able to!