Untitled--Jaden

If it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t think of any other event in my life, I absolutely
wouldn’t have chosen this one. But alas, I cannot. So here it is, the story of how I chipped my tooth.
I suppose this story really starts on Christmas of 2013. I never ask for much but that year there was definitely a gift on my mind. I wanted a skateboard. As you may have guessed, I ended up getting it. But for me this wasn’t a gift that I’d forget so easily. I had a cousin who was all about this kind of stuff and I learned quick. If it hadn’t been for the accident, I’d probably still be doing it. 

Two months had past and I would still skate every day after school. I had just gotten home on Valentine’s day and was about to keep my streak going. My little sister was playing outside and I decided that I would join her. I went into the garage to grab my board from where I always left it. Even today all of this memory is still very clear. My mom had just left the house with my brother and my dad had just got back from work. Now when I left the garage I looked out at the neighborhood from the top of my driveway. It’s steep so it’s an easy way to pick up speed fast. I saw my sister over at the neighbor’s front porch and decided that I could just, roll over there. Which I did, just not as gracefully as I had hoped. As I started to roll down the driveway onto the pavement there was a sense of confidence about me. I had been doing it for quite some time so a little thing like going from one house to another shouldn’t have been a problem. 

It was right in front the neighbor’s house where I fell. I was coming in hot and was so close to coming to a nice smooth stop. But there was a variable in all of this that I had no knowledge of. In front of the neighbor’s house there is a crack. Barely visible, but very much present. As I rolled in my left front wheel stopped right in that crack. Causing me to fling off the board. These few seconds would play over and over in my head for the next few months. Instead of covering my face or closing my mouth I did the exact opposite. Which left my front teeth very vulnerable to the curb. My mouth smacked onto the concrete and I knew that something wasn’t right. There was no lying on the ground to catch my breath. I had gotten up right away to assess the damage.
The first thing I noticed was the pressure. It felt like someone has just pressing their finger right on my two front teeth. Eventually my tongue did some inspecting for itself. With the tip of my tongue I felt the bottoms of my two front teeth. At first I wasn’t able to tell that a sufficient amount was missing. What I really felt first was the sharpness. As if I had two blades for teeth. But after a minute I knew that I had to check. So I went up to the side mirror of a random truck and took a good look at it. You know the movie Dumb and Dumber? It was basically as bad as that. At first I just didn’t know what to do. I ran to show my dad and the first thing he said was, “Well, that looks like It’ll be expensive.” Eventually my mom got home to see the damage and

she didn’t take It as well as my old man. Instead she immediately set up a dentist appointment right then and there. For the next few days I tried to just forget about it. Yet it would pop up in my head constantly. Just the idea that I was missing this little part of me would be on my mind day in and day out. Which brings me to why this story is so significant to me. 

For months after I would think of the worse things happening all because of this accident. Every 15 you have to go in to replace the false part of the tooth they give you. So for a while I would think of the possibly of me not being able to afford it in the future. Or the possibility that, for some random reason, they would end up just pulling the remains of the tooth and give me a new one entirely. All of this just played in my head and put me in a state of mind that I really did not enjoy. So to really stop thinking about it, I had to take a step back and look at the big picture. I chipped my tooth. A very little part of my tooth that I never even thought of before that day. There are people who lose limbs. People who’ve lost all their teeth because they can’t get proper dental care. Yet there I was all sad over this little occurrence. So in the end, it taught me to be grateful it wasn’t worse. Because I can guarantee there are people out there who would gladly trade my incident for theirs.