The corner of one of my bottom front teeth is chipped. It’s very small and not terribly noticeable at first glance, but it’s there. Most of the time I don’t notice it unless I deliberately run my tongue across it. But some days, it feels sharp enough to cut right through my lip.
I have no idea how I chipped it.
But I remember exactly when it happened.
September 16, 2008.
I was driving around downtown St. Paul…completely lost…in search of St. Joseph’s Hospital. It was the day my dad was having surgery to repair the aneurysm in his brain—the ticking time bomb they had discovered after he had suffered two strokes in less than six months.
I was in the middle of a mild panic attack in my car—because I was completely lost—and I felt something gritty on my tongue. It was something I’d felt before (not the first time I’d chipped a tooth after all), I spit it out on my finger and looked at it—were those tiny pieces of tooth? I felt something sharp hit the tip of my tongue. When I had the opportunity at a stoplight, I looked in my rearview mirror—I had somehow managed to chip one of my bottom, front teeth.
I can only imagine it was a weak spot in the tooth brought down by my constant, involuntary, stress-induced teeth grinding. I had no foreign objects in my mouth at the time that could have caused it.
My dad’s surgery was successful, he came out [mostly] unscathed. But that chip in my tooth is a permanent reminder of one of the longest, most stressful days of my life.
Today is one of the sharp days.
—