- 8/14/2009 1:47:10 PMBlack, Brown, Red, GreenWhat is black, brown, red, and green? In my entire life, I can't think of one single thing I have ever seen on earth that has all of those four colors at the same time. There are the "black hills", there is "brown potting soil", there is "blood", and there is "grass" - but I can't think of anything that has all of those particular colors. That is, until now.
So there I am, sitting in my chair, reading a book. Michael comes up to me and says, "hey Dad!". For a moment there, I thought I had fallen into a sewer filled with the corpses of decaying rats covered in human refuse. The smell of death had completely engulfed me and waves of nausea came over me. After my vision returned, I looked up to Michael who was standing over me. I realized what the smell was and where it was coming from.
I asked Michael to open his mouth wide and stop breathing. I peered inside and there I came face to face with death and decay. When I was a kid, the local dentist would visit my school and show large disgusting horror show like pictures of tooth decay. He would say, "Don't let this happen to you"! I thought he was just using some kind of scare tactic and that teeth like that were not real.
I remember watching Captain Kangaroo and the Tooth Brush Family each weekday morning. I can still hear their song:
Brush your teeth,
round and round,
circles small,
gums and all.
A small soft toothbrush
the round and round way
will keep your gums healthy
and stop tooth decay
so brush very carefully
three times a day
go round and round. YEA!
go round and round. YEA!
Dental care has been the source of anguish for Michael. I am fairly certain that no one ever taught him good oral hygiene and allowed his teeth to rot out of his head. When he visited us in 2007, we brought him to our local dentist where we learned of the extensive fillings and hack jobs that had been done in his mouth. His first experience with American Style Oral Torture is when I brushed his teeth for him for the first time. If you were a casual observer at that moment, you might have thought that I had lit his tongue on fire from the way he was reacting.
I had my left arm around his shoulders and I was brushing his teeth with my right hand. I had to support his body weight with my left arm because he was trying to drop to his knees and bending backwards and pulling his head as far away from me as possible. It is a day I will never forget.
Anyway - back to our story. I'm looking in Michael's mouth and there are at least 4 dead or mostly rotten teeth in there. Two of them are very red with some green and brown, the other two are very black and brown with some green. "Have you been brushing?", I ask. I should have known better than to ask because I know I'm going to get a story laced with half truth. You know, being untruthful about brushing your teeth is a lot like telling Grandma that you can swim when you can't. Both the water in the lake where you swim and tooth decay are unforgiving forces. You can lie all you want about them but in the end, all the lies in the world will not save you when you get in trouble.
We had previously taken Michael to the dentist and were informed that most of the rotten teeth in his mouth are baby teeth. I guess you could call that "good news". Some are adult teeth had cavities and the dentist filled them accordingly. The other teeth were left in there so that he would have something with which to chew his food.
Generally speaking, Michael does a terrible job at brushing his own teeth. We've gone over the specifics of brushing round and round, getting each tooth thoroughly, flossing... all of it - many, many times. Just like wiping his own butt, or combing his own hair, he turned this in to a control/power struggle game and we have more or less refused to fight this battle. They are his teeth and he will pay the consequences of not listening. We have given him a small kitchen timer and told him to brush for 3 minutes. Upper left, upper right, upper middle, lower left, lower right, lower middle, then the tongue. After that, use some antiseptic mouth wash for a minute.
I took Michael in the bathroom and had him look in the mirror at his teeth. Then I took some digital photos and blew them up on the computer so he could see them up close and personal. I asked him, "What do you think will happen when that black stuff goes deeper into your tooth?". "It will go into the root", he said. "After it goes through the root, where will it go next?", I asked. "Um...." - No response from Michael. I said, "It will go into your jaw bone." "I didn't think of that", Michael responded.
Of course he didn't think about that. That is a "tomorrow" kind of question and we all know that "tomorrow never comes" and "actions have no consequences" so there is no point in thinking about it. "Well - tomorrow is here and you have dead things in your mouth and they are growing a bumper crop of decay. Everyone you talk to knows it." I pointed Michael to the two red teeth and told him to start rocking them back and forth and pull them out. He was able to get both of them out fairly quickly and put them into a zip lock sandwich bag. Of course, he wanted a dollar for each of them from the Tooth Fairy - but that is another story.
When he brushes, if that is what is actually going on in his mouth, there seems to be very little rhyme, reason, or pattern to his efforts. I told him whatever you're doing, it isn't working and perhaps he could try the things we've showed him a thousand times. Then I show him the bag of black, brown, red, and green teeth. I have him open the bag and smell. "YUCK!! That is gross", he says.
Then I explain to him, "Imaging mixing a gob of spit in with those teeth and then drinking it down". "That is GROSS Dad!", Michael exclaims. "That is exactly what you were doing when they were in your mouth", I said. "All that spit with the decay went right into your stomach. Where did it go from there?", I ask. "All over my body", he responds.
I remind Michael that his random brushing pattern does not work and he needs to change his strategy. Here it comes.... I brace myself. "But Dad, I go like this, and like that!", Michael says excitedly. I show him his rotten teeth again. I have him smell them again. "But Dad, look! This is how I do it!", he exclaims again. Michael is very insistent that his techniques work and that it is his teeth that somehow have a manufacturers defect. I show him his teeth again. I ask him if he wants to smell them again. "No.", he says. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that what he is doing is not correct nor "good enough", he is defiant.
"Just brush the ones you want to keep", I tell him.
