Is it Parent Blogger Children's Tooth Depreciation Week or what? OK, I have nothing remotely resembling The Dad's trauma, but I do have one chipped front tooth courtesy of the playground that time forgot. One minute you're sitting ten feet away from your child while he plays on the metal horses (who thought of that?) and you discuss your day with your spouse and behold the lovely mountains in the distance, and the next minute you're running up the street from the playground the time forgot holding a screaming three-year-old with part of his front tooth missing wondering why the quarter-mile to your house suddenly seems so damn long.
How does this happen?
In the past, I have expressed a sort of fondness for this playground. It is the kind of place that so should not be allowed in Today's Litigious Society (TM). The slide at this playground is easily 12 feet tall, metal, and completely lacking in the requisite wood chips that normally surround all playground equipment of this generation. It is not a gentle slope. It's high and fast and shoots its rider to the ragged edge of a ravine. The merry-go-round goes faster than some cars I've driven ('67 VW bug anyone?) and is of the style I remember falling off and being dragged around with my elbow trailing in the gravel. And of course there are the metal horses. These aren't the kind that swing on a chain--though those are indelibly etched in my brain from the time my brother took one in the teeth--but they're still far more dangerous than anything available in 90 percent of America. One slip and, well, someone loses a tooth. How cool is the playground the time forgot now? Not so cool. I'm beginning to appreciate the virtue of boring, modern playgrounds.
The good news (for now) is that it is a small chip and does not seem to have exposed any root or knocked the tooth loose. We will see what the dentist says, hopefully tomorrow. I pray fervently that I won't need to know the Montana word for pliers (though it's probably just pliers).
But really, here, it demonstrates yet again the unerring aim of karma. I knocked out my teeth not once but twice as a child doing such brainy things as jumping tooth-first off the back of a couch. How I ended up getting a Master's degree I'll never know. My parents were probably on a first-name basis with doctors in emergency rooms from Havre to Deer Lodge. If there was a way for me to damage my hurtling toddler body, I found it. (See grainy photo at left.) Not to mention the asthma thing.
So tell me, karma. How exactly do I atone for the 5 to 10 years I spent scaring my parents to death without having to be scared to death myself? Is there a chant I can say or naked homeless people I can clothe? Because I'm getting tired of this route.