Gold Tooth

I took Shakespeare to the dentist last month to address a concern I had with his front tooth. It had been loose for about two months and he had been wiggling it constantly with little progress. One day he asked me to wiggle his tooth to see how loose it was and I noticed something: his adult tooth was coming in behind the baby tooth.

The dentist says that his bite will push the adult tooth forward and that Shakespeare should just continue to wiggle that front tooth until it comes out.



Shakespeare has never been a tooth puller. He will hardly let anyone touch a loose tooth let alone pull it. So his dead, yellowed, hanging-by-a-thread baby tooth sits in his mouth, pushed forward and pointing threateningly at anyone who dares to even think about yanking.

I think it makes him look like he belongs on a dilapitated front porch in a back Kentucky woods, alongside an old washer and dryer and maybe a rusting car on blocks. But if you ask Shakespeare about the tooth, he'll shoot you a big smile and tell you that it's his gold tooth.