The news that specially designed magnets are being used to stop people’s dentures slipping, is the kind of story into which one can get one’s teeth.
You have seen mine grinning at you from time to time. Some people have seen them in person but more often in rolls, pavlova or whatever’s offering.
Certainly my teeth and I have been going around in the same old set for years, false prophets all.
So naturally I’m interested in magnetised teeth although there is no truth in the assertion that people will spin around and face the north.
Certainly my dentures have played fast and loose at times and have a tendency to be aloof and even clicky.
People are shocked to learn my own teeth were lost in the ’20s but as everyone knows I have always been one for the lolly.
Similarly the cry “This won’t hurt a bit” has haunted me for years as the extractions go on undiminished, mostly from my bank account and all without an anaesthetic.
These days my teeth and I sleep in different rooms and they’re not the kind of things, yellowed and snarling, that you want to encounter in the bathroom. The last guest who did was later reported near Burra and still in her nightdress.
My dentist, who never comes within gumshot these days, once looked into my mouth and said: “The things that go on under that roof.”
Admittedly there have been times of tension, times when we have all been on edge. One morning after a severe sneeze my wife observed my bare gums and cried: “For Heaven’s sake where are your teeth?”
I replied casually “Oh, they’ve just pop ped out for a minute.”
But I must say that dentures in our house hold have been engaged in a meaningful and energetic lifestyle, constantly involved in mouth-to-mouth recitation.
Recently when I received new dentures, my wife’s face softened, her lips quivered, her arms crept around my neck and she whispered passionately: “Hullo, Jaws.”
Of course the discovery of teeth has often given palaeontologists and anthropologists a guide to creatures of the past.
The finding of my dentures in future will probably excite the scientific world.
“This creature was large, both carnivorous and vegetarian, walked mostly on its hind legs and possibly had an ill- filling outer skin. It is believed to have been fleshy and while not belligerent had a strong territorial instinct where its food was concerned. The teeth show signs of great wear.”
So keep your scene clean, and your fangs firm. Magnetised teeth are coming but mean-while you molars, it’s back to the daily grind.
Max Fatchen