Rant #1,484: The Teeth, and Nothing But the Teeth

Yes, I had my tooth fixed yesterday.

I not only broke the tooth while eating at my brother in law's wedding, I also lost the filling that was in that tooth, so I had it repaired yesterday.

It doesn't feel 100 percent yet, but for now, it will do.

I will have to break it in, figuratively, not literally.

I do not like going to the dentist, and this goes back years.

As a little kid, I went to the neighborhood dentist, Dr. Jurow, and the dentist told my mother that I would have to go somewhere else, because I was too wild and nervous in the chair while he worked on me.

My mother has often told the story that I was given a sedative before going to the doctor--I was probably about six or seven years of age--and even that didn't work.

Finally, my mother took me to old Dr. Silver, back in Brooklyn, and he was the one who tamed me in the dentist's chair.

Dr. Silver (not pictured) was an old, old dentist--remember, I was six or seven when I went to him, so he must have looked absolutely ancient to me at the time, but he must have been probably in his early 60s when I first went to him--and he was the dentist my mother used when she was a child.

Located right off of Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn on Cortelyou Road--and right across the street from where my grandparents lived--he was a natural, a guy who was born to be a dentist.

He was probably one of the first dentists to use sweet air, which basically put you into la la land once you inhaled it, and reduced your fears in the process.

He would tell me to take a couple of deep breaths as he put the apparatus on me, and think of being on a roller coaster, or even a carousel. I know one time he told me to make believe I was flying like Superman.

Whatever it was, it worked, and from then on, the dentist could work on my teeth.

And boy, did they need a lot of working on.

My teeth were horrible, taking after my father's teeth. As my baby teeth were making way for my adult teeth, those new teeth were growing every which way, and I do mean that literally.

Some were growing as they should, up and down, but still others were growing on angles, sideways, you name it, that was my mouth.

The other problem was that my baby teeth were not falling out at any type of rate, so I do remember that one time, knowing that I would need braces, Dr. Silver pulled at least eight of my teeth in one sitting.

I remember that he gave me one as a souvenir, and you could see that the root hadn't even dissolved, so it had to be pulled (leading to that story about me having "black man's teeth," a story I have told here before but won't go into again right now).

Anyway, Dr. Silver was old and crotchety, and he would yell at me from ear to ear and from tooth to tooth about cleaning my teeth properly. He was right, I wasn't a good brusher, but as I got older, I kind of tuned him out, and listened to him less.

But I still used him through my teen years.

He must have been in his mid to late 70s, still had the same nurse working with him--her name ws Emily, and she had been with him for decades--and then, one day probably in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, without our knowing it, he died.

We had made an appointment to see him, and when we got there, we noticed that things were different in the office, and there were less people there than normal.

The nurse told us point blank that the doctor had passed away, evidently right in the middle of doing a root canal, just two or three days earlier. They had gotten a doctor to fill in, and did we still want to see the new doctor?

We did, he was an Indian doctor, but that was the last time we went into Brooklyn to have dental work done.

So whenever I have gone to the doctor as an adult, I think of Dr. Silver.

He was a good doctor, had been an excellent dentist for generations, and he had both my mother and myself as patients.

For that, and that alone, he should have received sainthood, but if nothing else, I will never forget him for making my mouth at the very least a somewhat workable part of my body.

Dr. Silver was gold to me, and I will never forget the guy.