Dad’s Pocket Knife and the Infamous Impromptu Dental Work

Baby teeth come and go. And usually both processes are physically painful. Add in a little public humiliation, or the questionable application of a pocket knife, and it becomes the stuff of legend.

Impromptu Dental Work Part I:
It started as a regular evening at Rax, a short-lived roast beef fast food restaurant that featured a large talking alligator as its mascot. My little brother, Tom, my dad, and I had stood in the tethered line and ordered our dinners: a couple of roast beef sandwiches with spicy curly fries for Dad and a set of Uncle Alligator Kids’ Meals for Tom and me. Kids’ Meal Bonus: Jello in a plastic cup and a chocolate chip cookie on the side. Ohh yeah.

As excited as he was at the prospect of devouring his curly fries, two bites in, little Tom just couldn’t take it any more. That loose baby tooth kept jabbing his tender gums and had to come out.

“Go on, Tom, just pull it out,” says Dad.

But this was his first loose tooth. This was uncharted waters. He didn’t know if his tooth was really ready to come out or even how hard to pull. Was it going to hurt even more when it came out? Try as he might, he just couldn’t get a good grip. Even though he used a napkin embossed with the red Rax logo to absorb the slippery drool, his tiny wedge-shaped tooth eluded him. Luckily for him, Dad was armed with his pocket knife.

“Come here son, let me take a look at that. Just tip your head back a little…”

And with the quick flick of the knife, Tom’s tiny tooth popped out onto the floor. Once he located it amidst the crumbs and various other mystery bits, people clapped. At last, Tom now held his once troublesome tooth in his hand. This would certainly get him at least a quarter from the Tooth Fairy that night.

Impromptu Dental Work Part II:
As the blue 1985 minivan sped along I-95 in the annual voyage to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, something went wrong.

“Ray, pull over. Now.”

And that was that. The command had come from the navigator, our mother, to bring our journey to a halt at the closest rest stop. Mom had been to the dentist the day before where she received a temporary filling. That filling was supposed to last until her custom crown was ready for installation. Needless to say, it did not.

Here we were, more than 1/2 way to our seaside destination, a mere 3 hours left in our drive, and pressure had built up under the filling, so much so that it had to come out. Now.

Naturally, the prospect of putting anything near one’s mouth after leaving a rest stop conjures fantasies about massive, breeding germ colonies and the horrors that go with them. And now this? These rest stop germs, the very worst kind of germ, could potentially go directly into her mouth–into her aching, freshly-drilled tooth. There was only one solution.

Dad marched into the Men’s Room, Tom quick stepping behind him. It was Tom’s job to do the touching. He touched doors, faucets, paper towel dispensers, and more doors. Yes, he was touching the germs, but his hand could be sacrificed for the greater good. He knew his role and did it well.

Much to the amusement of my sister and me (and to the pained impatience of our mother), we watched as they returned from the restroom. Tom walking in front, Dad following with this bare hands held up in a surgeon’s post-scrub position, as to not contaminate them during transport. Tom opened the passenger door of the minivan and stepped aside. His job was done.

“Come here dear, let me take a look at that. Just tip your head back a little…”

And with a quick flick of the knife, Mom’s temporary filling popped out. People clapped. And Mom breathed a sign of instant relief. This would certainly deem prudent a long-distance call to the dentist later that night.

Nearly two decades later, as I recollect these childhood moments I ask myself what lessons I have learned from these experiences. Simply put: a steady hand and a ready pocket knife can solve most crises.

Of course this does not stand without the corollary: if your tooth hurts, don’t say a peep around my father or you run the risk of being involved in your own harrowing tale of impromptu dentistry.

Missing Shoes, Missing Fingers, and a Big Shot in the Ass

I was playing with shoes on the basement steps one afternoon while Dad whizzed, chopped, and drilled away on some project in his workshop. The usual sounds of muffled George Straight complete with Dad’s sweet swoopy whistling accompaniment poked through the seams in the stairs.

As my pink moccasins chatted away with a pair of galoshes about the doings of mom’s hiking boots, there came a SCHWING from the blade of the radial arm saw in the workshop followed by a very firm, very calm, and very loud “PRISCILLA!” from my father. I hopped down the stairs to investigate, and was instructed calmly to go get Mom. It was important. Important enough to interrupt my mom from folding laundry to her favorite Billy Joel album? Yeah.

There was hustling and bustling. Mom wrapped Dad’s arm in her red raincoat because his hand was bleeding. I thought that was pretty smart. Not only was it waterproof, it was red like blood. That Mom’s a pretty clever gal. We piled into the station wagon. How exciting! Not because we were going to the hospital or because Dad bore through the tissue and bone in his pinky finger with a saw, but because I was in the backseat wearing my slippers! Now this was just crazy! Ask Mom and I’m sure she’ll tell you it was more “annoying” or “ironic” at best, considering I had been playing with my shoes all afternoon and they were nowhere to be found when they needed to be on my feet.

So off we went to the hospital—the place where people fix people when they cut their fingers off.

Soon enough things were settled, fingers were being reattached, and nerves were calmer.  I had been seated in a waiting room with my very own coloring book. It had line drawings of kids seeing doctors for broken legs and arms. Kids in wheelchairs. Who could possibly be that happy to have their head wrapped in gauze and arm in a sling? And there was one drawing of a poor poor kid who was bending over to receive a big shot with a big needle right in the ass! Now THAT is scary! That’s like a booster shot in the leg, only way worse.

Afterwards, Mom and Dad spoke carefully to me about what had happened to my dad’s hand. They didn’t want to traumatize me. But I really wasn’t bothered by the ordeal. In a couple of days, after handing Dad a broken Ken doll to fix, he told me, “I can’t fix it. My hand is in a cast.” I rebutted instantly with “well use your other hand.” Really, what’s the problem here? I knew his hand was broken and that it was in the process of being fixed, so what’s the big deal?

But whenever people asked me the scariest part of the trip to the hospital, and I’ll still attest to it today, hands down, it was the coloring book drawing of kid the getting that shot in the ass.

I’m totally traumatized.

Bees in the Garbage Can. Grrrrrr!

When Margaret and I were about 6 and 4 years old (respectively), we’d spend all day running around the Cavalier Motel complex In Nags Head, NC with cousin Jeremy. Margaret was usually sporting a red and white striped tank bathing suit (that left her inversely sun burnt in white and red stripes when she took it off), and I was donning a blue ruffled bikini full of sand in every compartment. The Cavalier was a beach-side, 1-story, white, U-shaped building with about 20 units, a pool, and was full of various members of our extended family. It was also adorned with several trashcans where beach-goers dropped food waste, old sunscreen bottles, and beer cans. Though it was an unpleasant concoction of smells for us, it proved an unstoppable seductress for bees.

Being the imaginative little tikes we were, we’d run around the complex pretending to be various characters from TV shows and movies we’d watched. Sometimes it was Ponch and John from ChiPs, other times Spiderman, but with cousin Jeremy, it was always the Incredible Hulk.

On this particular day, our roles were assigned as follows: Jeremy, Mr. Hulk; Margaret, Mrs. Hulk; and Me, Baby Hulk. We ran around looking for reasons to turn ourselves from the mild-mannered Bixby family into the bulging, green, angry, clothes-tattered Hulk family. A transformation, in reality, only we would be able to perceive. A sea gull landing in our path or the twinge of stepping on a tiny seashell was usually enough to do the trick. But once Jeremy held open the metal lid to the trashcan and the bees shot out like bottle rockets, there was no turning back.

Grrrrrrr! Instant Hulkification.

For hours and days after that, we had a ready reason to turn into the Hulk family, whenever our concocted plot needed one. Of course, my ego grew tired of being Baby Hulk and eventually it was decided that a promotion to Grandma Hulk would work just fine.

And one last note, I think the final Hulkification was actually delivered by mini brother 1-year-old Tom when he toddled up to Jeremy (who was buried in the sand up to his neck) and kicked sand in his eyes. I’m not sure Jeremy ever dehulkified.