Chapter 4: Flipper's can be great mentors!

Chapter 4: Flipper’s can be great mentors!

I finally got my tooth back.

For context, I shattered my front tooth earlier this year being an idiot. I caught the corner of the bed frame and kissed my smile goodbye. So, for the better part of a year and a half, I was lisping like a mofo. And now, I finally got my smile back. Granted, I would break my replacement three to four times in the coming months, but that’s not terribly important.

This was incredibly formative for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, you go through some serious trauma without your front tooth… Especially when you’re a chubby, pimple-faced white kid. A pale white kid. I was looking good, y’all.

I quite literally had a massive gap in my smile. All my “s” sounds turned into mush. I had the voice of overcooked grits, with extra gravy on top, and shrimp on the side. My speech was a muddled, mocktail of confusion.

However, it was pretty easy to adjust to. After a bit of trying to speak with a Grand Canyon mouth, you learn to enunciate differently and reverberate your sound against other places (i.e., my one and only front tooth).

Now that this explanation (which has pretty much doubled as a pity party) has ended, I can get into the lessons of the lisp.

The first thing I can say about being toothless, especially in an era of my life where having a nice smile is very important, is that mental turmoil is surprisingly easy to calm. As you can imagine, being a high schooler without a front tooth can take a toll on one's mind. I was already self-conscious about how I looked, and now... well...

The first months of my Mike Tyson copycat world were difficult. I was learning how to speak, learning how to talk to people (two different phenomena), and I was learning how to navigate a toothless world.

Yet, the longer I sat with myself, I realized I didn’t care about my tooth’s unplanned absence. For instance, this was a conversation I had with my friend:

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, I got a haircut.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, you mean my missing front tooth.”

“Yeah, that one.”

“I don’t know, I got bored of how I looked and didn’t want to buzz my hair again.”

“Screw you nerd, tell me what actually happened.”

“Nerd doesn’t feel like a good descriptor. I prefer something more creative... Something like Toothless.”

I realized that having a gap made me special. Sure, I wasn’t the hugest fan of it in the beginning, but as time passed, I realized that my smile didn’t dictate me smiling. Being comfortable with my oddity made me more comfortable with myself. I am very odd as it is, so it was truly special to gain this comfort.

Conversations like these plagued my days for months after my visit with the tooth fairy. Yet, I enjoyed each one. I was unable to hide behind a tangible thing—in this case, my smile. No. I was forced to engage in the uncomfortable. No one wants to lose a tooth, but in doing so, I learned that authenticity is key to comfort. I’ve always been one to talk, a skilled conversationalist, yet this newfound barrier was just that.

A barrier.

It was a struggle to talk about my tooth. I felt out of place in a world of perfect smiles. Then the switch occurred. I was out of place in a world of perfect smiles. How lucky was I? I wasn’t boring, I was weird. Quite honestly, I was so glad to be weird. It gave me a quirk, it gave me a story. It certainly gave me a lisp. But most importantly, it made me grow and learn.

“In losing a tooth, I gained a new smile.” – Me, (respectfully, of course, and with a lisp)

To summarize this lesson, I gained comfort with being uncomfortable. In losing my tooth, I learned to be calm in the ferment, to be okay with my quirks, and I gained skills in conversing and navigating harsh and uncomfortable conversations. I may have lost a tooth, but I thertaintly gained thome therious character.

Now for the next lesson. This one is way more fun than that lovey-dovey introspective nonsense I encountered early on in my toothless era. 

You can make public settings so easy because you are the oddity. 

I don’t think you guys understand what I just said. So because I want to emphasize (and am a lazy writer) I will repeat it.

You can make public settings so easy because you are the oddity. 

This is a superpower. Let me explain using a scenario that occurs every single time I am in an airport.

To set the scene for you, I am wearing a very mundane outfit. I have my old Jansport backpack on. I am wearing gray, open-bottom Russell sweatpants that are slightly too big for me, so they reveal the top of my boxers. I am wearing a soft t-shirt with a monochrome graphic. My hair is messy. My curls are all over the place, yet my hair was pretty short during this period of time, so my bedhead wasn’t anything insane. For shoes, I wore black Adidas Sambas. To sum it up, I looked incredibly normal.

Well, normal except for the giant hole in my smile.

This specific instance took place a few months after I had received a semi-replacement tooth. I was currently wearing a flipper, which is a retainer with a tooth. However, as I got to the airport, I realized that I had left my flipper at home. I was flipperless, so my gap was completely exposed. However, this look was natural to me. I didn’t feel any more out of the ordinary than I normally would with the flipper because of my close community, all of whom knew of my toothless nature.

So I trek forth.

Wading through the dense waves of body odor and TSA agents, I made my way to the gate. It wasn’t a long walk. If I remember correctly, I was getting on a Southwest flight, so it was an easy venture. However, my normal friendly glances were not responded to in kind. People looked at me funny.

Yes, I know.

“Eh, you’re one of those weirdos who smiles at me in the airport, forcing me to interact with others… bleh bleh bleh… I’m anti-social,” says the homebody judging me right now.

Yes, Mr. nerdalert, I am one of those people. In all honesty, I just find it polite. Regardless, people looked at me funny.

And they kept looking at me funny for the remainder of my flying experience that day. It was as if I had doused myself in mayonnaise and was tweaking in the middle of the terminal. Last I checked, I’ve only done that once, and this was not that time.

After a brief moment of reflection, it hit me. I totally did have a giant hole in my mouth. Yet, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I was, in fact, extremely comfortable. My abnormality made others uncomfortable—more so thrown off, but still… my tooth afflicted great emotional turmoil within them. Why? I don’t know. But it just does.

Now, as I enter social situations, toothless as ever, I feel a great sense of comfort in the chaos. I am the lisping weirdo in flip flops making my way towards you when you really do not want to interact with a lisping weirdo in flip flops who is making his way towards you.

My superhero name needs work, but my powers, clearly, do not.

In summation, I learned a lot from losing my front tooth. Namely, two things. Firstly, I learned that being comfortable with oneself is very much a superpower. I own this gap, and no one can take it from me. Except my dentist. Secondly, I learned that life happens. And sometimes, you gotta roll in the dung before you get your tooth put back in. (Trademark pending on that last one).