Tuesday, March 13, 2007

BEWARE MY LONG, SHARP FANGS!

oo

For those of you who read this blog on a regular basis or even know me personally, you know that I have had some gum issues. Yup! Gum, that pinkish stuff that holds your teeth in their socket. The proceedure from hell started innocently enough with my dentist mentioning that my gums had receded a bit too much and that I should see a specialist. Well, it has been quite an ordeal. I won't bore you with the gory details. Suffice it to say that gum grafts are NOT fun. If it works, it looks great as it did on one side of my mouth. If it does not, well, there are those redo operations, I am on the third redo on the right side. Yes, as I said, it is not fun.
All this made me finally understand the correct meaning of the English expression "a bit long in the tooth." For all my years here in America, I thought that this meant that a person was fierce or had predatory tendencies. Sort of like a wolf or a vampire, you know. Large fangs which could easily tear one's victim apart. Not so! Long in the tooth simply means that you are getting older. How mundane!
I prefer to fuse the two. I admit to getting longer teeth because of age, but I am also getting more vicious and implacable in my opinions (especially about our worthless politicians. So if this latest round of gum graft surgery works, I will be like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Nice pink smile, but the unflinching determination that comes with age. Almost makes all these surgeries worthwhile.

No comments: