All I want for Christmas ...

As I sat in the dentist's chair at 9 o'clock this morning, the moral of the story I'm about to relate once more ran through my mind:

When hopping from rock to rock on a cold, rainy day, take the time to pull your gloves out of your backpack.  Don't keep your hands warm by thrusting them through the pocket openings of your rain pants and down into the pockets of your jeans.

The discerning reader already sees all too well where this story is going, and really needs to read no further.

But that's too short an entry for a blog post.  So let me pad it a bit.

You see, gentle reader, the coefficient of friction between boot sole and said rocks, under conditions of great wetness, is significantly reduced -- so that your feet tend to slip out from under you.  And, should you be leaning forward, ever eager to increase your hiking speed, you will tend to fall forward.

Now, it's quite possible to remove your hands from your pockets, extend your arms in front of you, and break your fall, suffering nothing more than a few scratches on the palms of your hands.  The problem, however, is the relative times required (1) to remove your hands through two layers of pockets and (2) to fall on your face.  I lost the race.  I mangled my face, driving various crumbled portions of my front teeth deep into my lower lip, whence they emerged, bit by bit, over the coming months.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  This event happened nearly thirty years ago, in mid-"summer," deep in the frigid, sodden center of the Norwegian mountains.  I was force-marched -- carefully, there being some concern about a concussion -- to the nearest dentist in the nearest village, a kindly fellow who practiced dentistry in his home, while his wife cooked dinner in the adjoining kitchen.  My mouth was unavoidably a mess -- only about half way into the hike -- which I resumed, nauseating my fellow hikers, the following day -- but he did a beautiful job of rebuilding my front teeth.  He said that his repair was temporary, but would be good enough to get me back to the States, where my dentist could do something permanent.

Back home, my dentist saw no reason to disturb the fellow's Norwegian workmanship.  Huzzah for Norway, I say, especially since their "socialized" medicine footed the bill.  Makes me proud of my partial Viking ancestry.

But not even Norwegian craftsmanship lasts forever, and repairs have become necessary during the past several years.  Around Christmas, a hunk of artificial tooth fell off (somehow, sometime -- I never noticed it happening) from the right central incisor, giving me a raffish appearance, a look perhaps inconsistent with my otherwise mild and bookish demeanor.  My dentist did a nifty repair job. Which lasted about a month.

Embarrassed, he did a re-repair job on his own dime. Then, last week, the tooth fell apart again.

Thus I found myself in his chair once more this morning, where he attempted to anchor the superstructure (he calls it a "filling," but it's not really "filling" anything) more firmly to the tooth stub.   He worked fast, the job was painless, and the results appear quite nifty.  He actually made my "two front teeth" more symmetrical in size and shape, which will encourage me to flash a toothy smile at everyone for a few days until I forget the whole matter.  Or until my tooth falls apart once again.

Modern dentristry is wonderful.  A generation or so ago, I'd have been doomed to a gold cap for the rest of my life.  Or, more likely, to a gaping gap in my front teeth.  But, even so -- far, far better to have kept my original teeth, in their entireties.

Which is why, I guess, old folks always used to nag us to stand up straight and "keep your hands out of your pockets."  Especially in Norway.  When it's raining.  And you find yourself hopping from rock to rock.