There was once a little shepherd-boy.
When I was at school, I just wanted to do what the other kids were doing. In Grade 5, all I wanted were braces. My parents refused, I had perfect teeth.
The shepherd boy thought he would play a trick on the villagers.
So he ran toward the village crying out, with all his might,
“Wolf! Wolf! Come and help!”
I ran into a big glass sliding door at ballet class and bashed one of my teeth out, lying in a smidge of blood and faking a hit-by-a-glass-door coma.
All the villagers came running out to help the boy!
My mom conceded to embrace my lower teeth and I was soooo happy. I had the braces removed after the longest and most painful 2 months, because all I wanted was a standing ovation for my exquisitely transformed mouth and my brand new dramatically made-over appearance. I stood in the kitchen grinning at my dad, he smiled back at me. I grinned wider, with slightly stretched facial muscles, he grinned back. I grinned grimacing, ‘DAD! I had my braces removed!’ He said, ‘Well done’ and carried on blending a Herbal Life fruit smoothie. ‘DAD! LOOK!’ He managed a very forced, ‘OH’ with a blatantly obvious, I-had-no-idea-you-had-braces-and-am-not-entirely-sure-what-braces-are-other-than-the-2-straps-that-hold-up-Mr-Chaplin’s-pants look. ARGH! All that pain and suffering for no reason and my teeth don’t look any different at all!
But the villagers saw no wolf, told the boy to shut up and went back for a beer in the pub.
The stupid Ornotholodontist guy had left a stupid piece of metal wiring in the back of my mouth so as to keep them straight, even though they had always been straight! A couple of months later, my friend gasped at my mouth. With a slow denying gesture toward the car mirror, I toothy-grinned my reflection.
“WOLF WOLF!”
My 4 bottom teeth looked like they’d been demolished with a nuclear sized implosion. They’d fallen in on one another and caused an enamel-calcium pile up only seen in the worst devastation horror tooth movies.
“WOLF WOLF” screamed the boy.
The villagers were past out drunk and didn’t hear the screams.
Running bare foot in tattered clothes and my waving arms, I blasted into the Ornotholodontist guy’s rooms and demanded he fix my gobber. All he did was remove the broken wire culprits from my toofs and left me with a broken house of cardteeth. The damage is still very visible and the property market in the area has completely collapsed. Surrounding teeth have rude graffiti and broken windows on their dulling grey paint.
The little boy went to bed, terrified.
Then, all my friends were getting their Tonsils out, I never even managed to scrape up fake tonsillitis except once in London long before it had became fashionable. It was like learning the words to all the Hanson songs and then them disappearing into bad-brother-music abyss. Now, all of a sudden, bursting red pustuly tonsils were the in thing and I had nothing, not even so much as an itchy and scratchy throat after standing outside in winter with my mouth open dropping infected pebbles into it!
One day, like magic, my jaw locked. Thank you! Thank you for my ailment so that I can fit in the world of cool people with victim complexes, so that we can sit around our packed lunches and share our adult experiences of pain and suffering during big break, while the boys place an eternal game of touch rugby, that they are probably still playing right now in the quad, a decade later.
A locked jaw! ‘MOM, MOM! I need my wisdoms out. Ow ow ow, it’s so sore oh oh oh ow’
“WOLF, WOLF”
The villagers left their work and ran to the field to see what the commotion was this time.
No sooner said than I was lying on a hospital bed in a green, backless robe with my mama and papa standing by my side. Oh I’m so brave. Oh I’m so grown up. I hope everyone in school knows that I’m having my wisdoms out. I hope they’re all talking about it! Counting down from 10, I got to ‘Te…’and was out cold.
The villagers watched the boy as he lay screaming, ‘WOLF WOLF!’ in his sleep.
The next thing I remember is my father pushing me on a wheelchair, with a massive ice-cubed head gear piece wrapped around my entire face, I was totally delirious and drowsy. My dad was having a ball pushing me fast through the slippery floors of the hospital
Then, a ridge in the floor. Doof. Hit it.
“WOLF! WOLF!” he screamed. “Help!”
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. My completely paralytically drugged body flew head-gear first through the sliding hospital doors – DOOF – onto the outdoor pavement. And there my dad stood, in gawking giggles at his flung child.
“WOLF! WOLF!”
The villagers took a shovel and knocked the boy out.
My mom and dad were in hysterical laughter. I was unconscious. Again.
The villagers feasted on a big bowl of lamb curry and howled at the full moon.
