The one thing me and your grandma have in common: we both have fake teeth. I am missing and always have been missing what is known as your lateral teeth, also known as the two teeth that sit beside your front teeth.

It all started three years ago on a sunny Thursday and I’m jersing up for my first ever DGS volleyball game. One bite into the green apple my handheld and both of my fake teeth came off of my braces and were stuck right into the apple.

I’d like to recognize my grandmother, Susan Metherd, the woman who taught me to be a proud toothless Metherd. She has always told me that focusing on your looks will lead you straight into a path of complete insanity, as you can’t please anyone until you can please yourself and look. She also has missing teeth, so I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, nor does the tooth from the apple.

Fortunately, I got my braces off after a whopping nine years and gained another wonderful thing: a retainer with fake teeth.

Now, I was in control of when they came out. Call it my own party trick if you will, and the recipe to success in distracting the other team in a volleyball game. A quick pop of that retainer and every girl at the meet turns.

What the dentist forgot to tell me about having these teeth was that they become really loose, at least the retainer does, and that could cause them to slip easily. My dear friend Kristin experienced this when a burst of laughter on the way to a volleyball game turned into looking for my teeth everywhere after they flung out of my mouth into her lap and somewhere on that bus.

Eventually this repeated itself far too many times, falling out into the sink and I had to disconnect the pipes to find it in the muck, because those things cost a grand. I swear my mom would lose it if I’d let one go. I’ve dug through not only my school’s garbage, but also Taco Bell garbage to try and find my retainer which ended up in my jacket pocket.

Winter break my family took a trip to Florida in 2020. I didn’t like the way the teeth looked sitting on the retainer; they were crooked so I took some action and moved them all by myself, eventually popping one out from the wire breaking. Turns out I’m not a dentist, nor is my dad who applied so much dental glue to the tooth that we couldn’t even fit the retainer back in my mouth afterwards.

So that left me with no retainer which meant no teeth for the rest of the trip which was two days into a two week stay.

Merry Christmas; love, your favorite jack-o-lantern!

Well the best news about that was hearing I would need braces again when I came home to fix the damage, as if my teeth haven’t done enough they’re asking for more.

One of our most memorable moments together had to be my sixteenth birthday party. It was about 6 p.m., and I had just had dinner with my parents. I was headed to a friend who gave me no word on the plan but told me to dress cute.

All of a sudden my teeth came looser than I remembered them being and they both fell out with one touch. It was too late to go see my orthodontist. I had to take measures into my own hands.

“DAD!”

I remember crying down the stairs.

“WE NEED THE GLUE AGAIN.”

My dad runs to the store and comes home with what looks like a toothpaste bottle, sure enough, it says right on the packaging “dental paste”, not the kind you brush your teeth with but not the kind that sticks things into place… so then what is this?

We tried it; it does not work too soft. Google says to freeze it; okay, then what happens if it melts?

Google says dental paste isn’t going to stick at all, so what does my dad do? Oh, he superglues them.

A little dentist pasted a little super glue and some wax around it so that it wouldn’t poison me. Done.
Other than the dry glue turning yellow and looking that food stuck in my teeth I’d say this was a success and not only that my orthodontist was impressed.

In a couple of weeks now I’ll be getting teeth that I can’t take out, that is what they say at least. So in honor of these two pals that have been through so much with me, I will be giving them the surest farewell and hope to never see you again.

Learning that less was always more laughs than a full set. All I can do is what grandma did, sit back, laugh, and oh just one second before we eat I need to take my teeth out.

And of course afterward when it’s all over.
Where did those darn things go?