All I want for Christmas...

As I have become older I realize that I am no longer as vain as I used to be. I can ignore a sore spot on my face without half of the worry the teen aged Carolyn used to have over the tiniest pimple. (Of course we used to call them Hickies until my kids laughed me out of the house!) As long as the doctor says it isn't one of the dangerous types, I can let it continue and shine on wherever it takes a notion. I think as long as I have reached this age with no enemies that I know of, and no one has run away screaming when they saw me, I was acceptable to most people.

There are a few exceptions however.

Last Friday night I attended the Holiday Auction of the American Association of University Women. The members brought refreshments for the group to enjoy while they were looking over the offerings. In addition to that there were attractive little candy kisses and little Hershey "fun" bars arranged down the middle of the table to keep us happy in between counting our money and enjoying the prattle of Delbert Johnson who volunteers his talents for this group every year.

I have a particular fondness for the Hershey Krackle Bar. I think that is spelled right but it isn't in the dictionary to check. But one of the Krackle bars was right in front of my seat, just saying, "Look at me. I'm here for you to eat." I obeyed and took a small bite. I realized that this Krackle bar was more krackly than usual. In a hopefully half-way polite way I removed the contents of my mouth to see what was causing that extras crunch.

I wasn't too happy to discover that the crunch was actually my top right incisor tooth, which was sitting nicely in my napkin with little bits of the intended chocolate crunch pieces. The AAUW members sprang into life to try to take care of me with a cold cloth, a way to preserve the wandering tooth, and offers of aspirin of other pain killers. However I had no pain. I had no blood. But I also had no tooth in the correct spot. The tooth looked so small on the Kleenex, but the hole I was feeling in my mouth with my tongue was large enough for a semi-truck to pass through

I didn't do much talking the rest of the evening because I knew how it must look. After I got home I got advice from a retired dentist that it would be fine to wait until Monday morning to get to a dentist since it wasn't hurting me or bleeding or any of those unpopular activities.

Then I got up my nerve to go look in the mirror and see what I looked like with this gap. My tongue feeler wasn't wrong. That hole was LARGE. Why it couldn't have been on the side or back, I don't know, but this is very obvious and ugly.

So, in spite of not worrying about my looks as much since I am older, I stayed home from going to a church dinner. I stayed home from church. I avoided mirrors all weekend.

I'm writing this on Sunday night so it may be a whole new story by the time you read about it on Friday.

But one thing I am sure of, all I want for Christmas is both front teeth. And I don't really want to wait until Christmas to get them either.

When I drank a vanilla milk shake for my Sunday lunch, I discovered one advantage to my temporary situation. The straw goes up between the existing teeth very nicely and I didn't spill a thing.