The Loose Tooth

I will be honest, most nights I come home to a house that someone has done something stupid and upset their mother. I walk in the house and immediately want to walk right out the back door. Well maybe it just seems that way.

Then there are those - oh so rare - occasions that I love coming home. Like last night, I open the garage door and out pops Zoe – “Dad I have a loose tooth, see” - as I notice the red spotted paper towel that she is carrying. I think that this will be number three for Zoe. Number 1 hurt so bad that Penni took her over to Uncle Jason’s office and he pulled it pain-free with the help of some numbing. Number two was pulled out at school – never knew the details. And now we have number three. Nichole and Kristine pulled there own teeth, so I never got a chance to “help”. So tonight Zoe was on a mission to get her tooth out. She quickly wanted me to call Uncle Jason and get the pain stuff. I didn’t feel that it was an emergency and didn’t want to bug him – but on the inside I have always wanted to use power tools or pliers to extract a tooth. Or even some dental floss would be great. So I called Jason and the pain free stuff was at his office – but then I heard the words that I wanted to hear. In summary because I can’t remember it word for word but I came away with the feeling that I had the green light to rip the tooth out. It put a little smile on my face.

So I get off the phone and tell Zoe the pain free stuff is at Uncle Jason’s office – I guess he doesn’t have a bottle at the house – just for fun. But I have plan B - wait here while I go get my tools. So I get the needle nose pliers, and I just wasn’t feeling it, they slipped off the tooth to easy. So then I went to the dental floss, I had a hard time getting it around the tooth. But I finally did. I had this vision of me yanking the tooth out and blood squirting out. Not a good thing. So I first tighten the floss and as I did it moved up the tooth and now I have it wrapped around the tooth and I can see that if I yank on the floss it is going to go right along the gum line. This whole time I had gotten Zoe an ice cube to suck on, my thought was that it was going to numb the pain but it really only gave her something to do and kept her mind off the tooth.

So here we are at the moment of truth, the floss is securely around the tooth. Zoe knew what is next – so I am stroking the floss like it is a long piece of hair. Because I needed to have the moment of surprise to be on my side. Going over my mind replayed should I do it – how hard should I yank – am I going to be the hero or the goat. Penni and Kristine are glued to the action and then ………. I yank on the floss…………the floss goes flying…….. and the tooth………well it just stayed were it was ……… Zoe’s face said it all …she didn’t know whether to cry or laugh ….. being a card carrying female ….. she chose to cry and fell right into her mothers arms. But I had just completed one thing on my list of 1000 things to do before I die – rip out one of my kid’s teeth.