For the sake of those who are tired of my bitching about medical stuff, skip this post. For those who want to read a post tangentially related to Christmas, read on. Also, this will probably be the last post for a few days.
The house where I grew up is a den of perversion and vice. A place where sexuality knows know boundaries, and no shame, and where drugs, violence, and alcohol go hand in hand. It was not uncommon for me to go for days without eating, or spend the better part of the week locked in the closet.
Not really, but you were eating it up, weren’t you? Sicko.
Anyway, the house I grew up in has its garage in the back and in the basement. Our front yard is even with the street, but the house sits on a hill, and as you make your way around to the back of the house you’re also going down a hill. So our driveway runs from the street, past the side of the house and down the hill, and around the back of the house to the garage. We never use the garage because it’s full of junk, but the hill at the side of the house becomes the perfect place to sled when it snows. The ground freezes quickly, and stays frozen longer, so that even when the snow has melted on the grass, the snow on the driveway sticks around.
During the day of the 26th Superbowl, on January 26, 1992, a few hours before the Redskins were to play the Bills, I was playing with my friends, sledding down the hill.
We had built a ramp at the end of the driveway before a grass slope in the yard. We had upgraded to inflatable snow tubes that year, and the hill was particularly icy, so we were actually able to catch some air off the ramp.
I had just come back from an excellent run and I was making my way to the top of the hill. One of my friends was calling for me to bring him the tube so he could have his turn. I kicked the tube up the hill, and he let the sled he was holding go so he could grab the tube. The sled hit me square in the feet and propelled me forward toward the ground.
I shot my hands out in front of me to catch myself, but my hands slid outward and my face hit the icy ground. Hard. I immediately felt the familiar pain of a nose hit so hard that it was bloodied, but I also felt something new. Something about my mouth didn’t feel right.* I was screaming and tears wear pouring onto my cheeks. With every breath blood was spraying from my mouth onto the snow. It was my own personal Fargo.
I went inside the house and my brothers were playing video games on the computer. I was crying and they didn’t even look away from the screen. Finally my younger brother looked at me with disdain, as if he was about to say, “Can you keep it down? We’re playing Commander Keen.”
Instead his eyes widend into shock, and he ran upstairs screaming, “Call the hospital! Call an ambulance! Call somebody!”
My mom came downstairs and approached me slowly. She wiped the blood off my face with a wet washcloth and was trying to look at my teeth. She asked me to open my mouth and look at the ceiling.
Apparently she pushed my teeth, which were hanging by their roots into my mouth, back into the cavity from whence they came. I didn’t feel anything except the pain I already felt from having broken off 2 teeth and having my roots exposed, but when my mom recounts this story, she never neglects to mention that it took everything she had not to vomit when she saw the teeth slide back into my gums so effortlessly.
She quickly soaked the rag in milk (to preserve the calcium in the teeth) and then wrapped the cold milk-rag around some ice. I was rushed to an emergency dentist, and he was extremely nice about putting a cast on my teeth. Though he did keep making the same joke about how I wasn’t supposed to kiss any girls. I guess that’s supposed to be funny to an 11 year old going through puberty.
I’ll skip the details of the next several months where I got 4 root canals (2 per tooth), surgery to remove the broken pieces of teeth inside my gums, and dozens of check ups that for one reason or another always included novocaine shots.
Now it’s Christmas, 1992 and everyone keeps making the, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,” joke. I am not lying when I say that I heard that joke from just about everyone I knew that year. Classmates, teachers, friends, family, doctors, dentists, whoever. They all thought they were the first people to ever think of such comedic genius. I imagine after the 30th time I heard the joke, part of my 12 year old soul had withered a died just a little bit. In it’s place was the cynical, jaded soul that bears itself to you daily.
So, while other people can listen to that song and think of a Norman Rockwell-esque scene where a goofy-eyed youngster can look tepidly up at Old Saint Nick at the five and dime, all I can think about is how many times I had to hear what amounted to the most soul-crushing joke I’ve ever heard, and how much blood I swallowed.
Merry Christmas!
*Just remembering this pain caused me to get a little lightheaded when I was typing.
