My teeth have never been that great. It's a shame I didn't get more of me from Dad because he had a perfect set of choppers. Mom? Not so much. Neither did Grandma, and I definitely got my teeth from her. I found an old picture of her before she got dentures, and I can see my teeth in her mouth. Space between the front teeth and all.
Considering everything I've been through it's kind of surprising that I'm only down three teeth, and one of them was a wisdom tooth. All four grew in straight, so I never needed them removed. The two other teeth I lost I managed to replace with implants. One of them is going bad on me, which my dentist says is supposed to be impossible after having been in my mouth for so many years. Because my luck is shit luck, I can only assume that it's going to come out in the next couple of years, and I'll wind up with a bridge instead.
Dentistry really has come a long way over the years. Hell, since I was a kid! Everything changed. It makes me wonder what it must have been like losing teeth before all this technology. Dentures go back a long ways, but that was once state of the art tech in the field. What about people who lived before dentures? They just had to suck it up?
And then I thought about the life expectancy of cavemen, which I'd heard was 40 years old as a child. Looks like that number is wrong. 33 was the average life span of the caveman. Holy shit. Could you imagine being ancient at the age of 33?
But that is around the time when people start losing their teeth. All things considered I think tooth loss is nature's way of saying fuck you. You're getting older, so the end is near. Good luck eating without teeth, asshole. Just die already.
I know nature can grow teeth back. We can do it when we're kids. Rats have to keep gnawing on things or their teeth will get too big. Why can't we have a third set as we age? Because nature wants us out of the way for the next generation. We just confounded nature with science, and now we're living longer than we were meant to.
These are the kinds of thoughts I have when I'm trying to fall asleep. It's probably all bullshit, but what the hell. It's interesting to at least consider.
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