This absence of teeth tends to give the very young
of our species the appearance in the face of an old fashioned
buckskin purse with the draw string broken, but be that as it may,
we are generally fairly well content with life until the teeth
begin to come.
First there are the milk teeth. Right there our troubles start.
To use the term commonly in use, we cut them, although as a matter
of fact, they cut us--cut them with the aid of some such mussy
thing as a toothing ring or the horny part of the nurse's thumb,
or the reverse side of a spoon--cut them at the cost of infinite
suffering, not only for ourselves but for everybody else in the
vicinity. And about the time we get the last one in we begin to
lose the first one out. They go one at a time, by falling out,
or by being yanked out, or by coming out of their own accord when
we eat molasses taffy. They were merely what you might call our
Entered Apprentice teeth. We go in now for the full thirty-two
degrees--one degree for each tooth and thirty-two teeth to a set.
By arduous and painful processes, stretching over a period of
years, we get our regular teeth--the others were only volunteers--
concluding with the wisdom teeth, as so called, but it is a
misnomer, because there never is room for them and they have to
stand up in the back row and they usually arrive with holes in them,
and if we really possessed any wisdom we would figure out some way
of abolishing them altogether.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44