Razor Race

            My next-door neighbor Joey and I were quite the avid racers. We’d race on roller-skates, bikes, razors. It was a night like any other, the sky had faded out to a nice dark blue, the street lights flickering on along our cul-de-sac. As we walked to the end of our street, we started laying down the ground rules. The finish line would be the gray house right after Joey’s. We’d start on the count of three. No pushing or false starting, and we could only stay on the sidewalk to make it more challenging.

            We reached the end of street and lined up side-by-side. I was on the side closest to the driveways of the homes. We looked at each other and said in unison, “One…Two…THREE!” We both rocketed around the curve of the street. We were neck and neck, but after passing about three homes, I started to really push hard to make a pass. I pushed and pushed when in a flash, I lay on the ground in tremendous pain.

            While going around the curve, the front wheel of my razor got caught in a gap between the street and the driveway. My scooter stopped, and I flew over the handlebars landing face first on the cement. I didn’t know what was happening. My mouth was on fire with pain. I did what every other eight-year-old would- I screamed for my mom and bolted down the street toward my house. It would probably be a pretty hilarious scene to watch, a crying, screaming bloodied mess running down the street being chased by his friend yelling his name. I rushed in through the garage door of my house continuing my panicked screaming. My mom rushed over and quickly took me to the sink to wash me off. She asked, “What happened? What happened? How did you chip your tooth?” I frantically rushed to the mirror to find that indeed, I nice chunk of my front tooth was missing.

            Great. Not only was I in pain, I looked like a freak. My mom assured me we’d get it fixed, and immediately got on the phone with our dentist who happened to be my good friend’s dad. Still, I was fixated on the moment. I didn’t understand how you’d fix this chip in my tooth. I thought I’d permanently have this gap. My mom got off the phone, and said to get in the car. We were driving over to the dentist’s house so he could get a better look at the tooth.

           

            I didn’t say much in the car. I was finally starting to settle down. I even cracked a joke about maybe becoming a vampire with my new sweet fang. We both laughed. After a quick inspection, Dr. Slone said he could patch it up tonight if we wouldn’t mind driving over to his office. We drove to over to the office where Dr. Slone explained the bonding procedure he was about to complete. He told me he was going to create a fake tooth that would be attached to my chipped one to make it normal again. Sounded simple enough to me.

            He leaned the chair back and began to chip at the tooth. It was painless, just felt like scraping. That was only part one. Before I knew it, my upper lip was being held up by a piece of foam and a black tube with an acrylic shield was touching my tooth. For next thirty minutes, Dr. Slone seemed to weld my tooth back together. Once the construction process was done, he began to color the tooth, taking great care to match the current hue of my tooth. My chair came back up again and he let me look in the mirror. My tooth had returned. You couldn’t tell that anything happened. I was relieved and excited. Boy did I have cool story to tell the rest of the second grade class the next day.