Last summer, I fell and cracked four of my front teeth. Pieces chipped off at unhelpful times, I spat small shards politely into the sink and cursed every uneven paving stone and every apple, too. The dentist told me we wouldn’t know whether root canals or similar would be necessary for about six months and, as that six months rolls around, I find myself snarling into the mirror and thinking about teeth far more than is right.
Teeth are, I’d always thought, like deep sea creatures or details of my screen time, really none of my business. Their job is to gnaw, gnash, slice and grind as effectively and quietly as possible. My job is to keep them clean. That’s it. Fin. Beyond the brushing, none of my business. Cracking the front ones, however, has also opened a crack in my relationship with teeth, and now I am suddenly aware, not just of their precarious vulnerability, but of their increasingly weird place in contemporary culture.
