Toothless Tiger
During my long and not so illustrious business career I pounced on every opportunity that came my way, followed every lead to a fruitful conclusion and shared the rewards of my efforts with my partner and the kids leaving bits and pieces for others. My competitors grudgingly compared me to a tiger. I tried to live up to my reputation and, even though I say it myself, some would agree that I largely succeeded.

Time rolls on and our best days are soon behind us. We grow old and with old age come, not wisdom, but the aches and pains. Not counting loss of hair where you need it and growth where you don’t and the number of pills you have to swallow every morning and night to keep blood pressure and cholesterol in check and energy level up, the deficiencies you learn to take in your stride are countless: the back hurts after minimal gardening; knees refuse to hold you up when you run for the bus, eyes do not tell you the extent of the drop in the price of your stock and ears do not catch the soft tones in your favourite symphony. But these are mere inconveniences compared to what happens in your mouth. You eat a pecan, the tongue is all cankers, try to crack a pistachio nut with your teeth, teeth threaten to crack. Of course your spouse realizes the travails of an old body and empathizes when she gets an opportunity but mostly you suffer in isolation because you believe in Tolstoy’s dictum “Wretchedness shared makes one doubly wretched.”

A year ago my time arrived at a more severe stage: the teeth started to ache even when no nuts were in sight. The dentist examined their reflection in a tiny mirror, knocked them with a hammer with varying intensity, took x-rays and decided three of them had to come out. These were adjacent to the ones I had lost in my youth in unpleasant episodes. The teeth came out without much hassle in dentist’s comfy chair. However, I soon discovered that my left jaw was now useless when it came to biting and the right jaw functioned under protest.

It took a few months but I learnt to get by with bite on one side alone. Then one night when the clock was striking two I woke up with a sharp pain on the right side of my mouth. Three different painkillers of increasing potency did not help. What did work was brushing the teeth with my rotating electric brush. The pain subsided and then returned with vengeance after ten minutes. I spent the night alternately on a couch in the living room trying to rest and in the bathroom brushing the teeth. Time does move on, albeit horribly slowly when one is in pain. Morning eventually arrived; grandkids woke up and provided some diversion. Midday was the earliest the dentist could see me. I was in his reception room at 11 sharp.

The usual inspection in the tiny mirror, hammering and the x-rays produced the expected conclusion – the lower wisdom tooth had to come out and it had to come out soon. For once fortune smiled on me and the dentist had time to do it straight away. Out came the syringe, in went the local anesthetic and numb became the right side of my mouth. The dentist mumbled that the tooth had to come out in two parts. My mouth was stretched to its widest as if I were an aging tenor trying to get out my last high C for the expectant audience of thousands and held that way with clamps. The assistant passed a chisel and a hammer and the dentist hammered away at the tooth asking me occasionally if I felt any pain. I answered “Gaaaaa” which encouraged him to hit harder and harder. At last he exchanged the crude but highly effective tools for a tong. My mouth still stretched to its limits, he grabbed the tooth in the tong while the assistant held my face firmly in her hands, head resting on her ample breasts. He pulled up, pushed to one side and then the other and pulled up again and again and again till – aha, the hand shot out and I saw triumph in his eyes and the red culprit in his tongs. The process was repeated with the other half of the tooth till the triumphant doctor had removed the remains of my wisdom. While stitching the gap where the tooth was, he advised me to avoid any food intake for several hours and take painkiller when the anesthetic had worn off in the evening. He then asked the assistant to join him for lunch in a nearby steakhouse.

A week has gone by. I don’t have the ache and I sleep through the night but now my right jaw does not bite either. All my suffering is concentrated at meal times when the family is enjoying the wonderful cooking of my wife while I struggle with broccoli.

No one has ever called me a softie who feels sorry for himself, at least not in my hearing. But let me tell you. There is no one in the forest more deserving of pity than a toothless tiger.