Another from ENGL0180
This one’s a personal narrative.
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All I Want For Christmas
When I was in third grade, the ‘missing two front teeth’ look was a particularly coveted one among youngsters. There was a small bunch of kids in my class who had simultaneously developed large gaps in the front of their mouths… it was as though, overnight, the Tooth Fairy had gone on a shopping spree (double-or-nothing sale!). Those fortunate enough to have been paid a visit were automatically part of an exclusive society. They were the Chosen Ones, the truly mature third-graders. These lucky kids were ready to join adult society, equipped as they were with ample space for the big teeth necessary to take on the world. They, too, were the cute ones, the ones who could just as easily appear on the box of your morning cereal as in your elementary school classroom. They flocked together, the frontal-gap bearers, aware of their superior status and the newly acquired talents that came with the territory. They hissed when they spoke, sending saliva ricocheting through the newly opened space in a once-impenetrable enamel wall – probably intentionally, as adults went goo-goo over those adorable lispers. They whistled incessantly without ever puckering their lips, flaunting their ability to channel a haphazard stream of air through a hole they didn’t even intentionally make. They wooed unthinking grownups with their soggy speech and disarmingly vacant top row. They boasted, their remaining teeth grinning obnoxiously, about finding two teeth’s worth of quarters beneath their pillows. But most importantly, most objection-worthily, most inconceivably and unfairly, they got to sing in a featured group during my elementary school choir’s annual rendition of “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth.”
Who made this rule? Apparently, at some point in ancient history, some delusional grownup decided that the best possible artistic interpretation of this song would be a literal one, and generations of toothy kids have been paying the price ever since. Elementary schools should foster an open and accepting community, a sense of mutual respect among the entirety of four-foot-tall society. They should not condone ritualistic behavior and the creation of cults. Especially when those cults are based on having a large hole in the top row of your teeth, and not on your demonstrated musical prowess.
A self-proclaimed singer extraordinaire, destined to share the stage with Celine and Mariah on the sacred VH1 special “DIVAS”, I harbored a mouthful of teeth and a body-ful of burning resentment. I wanted to sing in that select group. I wanted to stick my adorable tongue through the adorable gap where my two front teeth once resided and revel in my adorableness at the annual Christmas concert. This was my destiny, I decided – to lisp through a verse and chorus of a children’s song for a holiday I didn’t celebrate, pigtailed and proud among the toothless elite.
From the first signs of looseness, a good month or two before the scheduled performance of my would-be shining musical moment, I dutifully kept my fingers from straying far from my top row. But my front teeth had a strangely intense grip on their gum-sockets, defying the calls of gravity and miraculously resisting the impatient shoves of my tongue. Days of teetering incisors turned into weeks, but for all their wiggling, my uncooperative teeth simply refused to be pried from their comfortable home. Somewhat sturdier teeth began to peep through the space once fully occupied by the loose ones, but still, the originals, now swinging like doors on hinges, stuck around. For an uncomfortably long stretch of time, I had four upper front teeth, an unattractive phenomenon that became increasingly awkward as the new set grew more substantial behind their predecessors. The universe, it seemed, was having a private laugh at my expense (“Let’s give her four front teeth and see what she does!”); meanwhile, I was somehow even further from my goal than before, and much more strange-looking. At this rate, I feared, I would never feel the warm caress of the school’s cafe-gymnasi-torium spotlights – not with too many front teeth and my resulting lack of the requisite cereal box cuteness. With the Christmas Concert looming, it was clear that the time had come for drastic action.
Finally admitting the insufficiency of my insistent finger- and tongue-pokes, I surrendered jurisdiction over my teeth to the dentist. He didn’t even bother to give me novacaine – just grabbed each clingy baby tooth with his latex-gloved hand and, unapologetically, yanked. In two seconds, they were gone, and I was free at last! I rushed from the dentist’s chair to the mirrors in the hallway, dribbling water down my front (I had forgotten to spit), and, hastily swallowing, flashed a smile at my reflection.
There they were. Still. Two front teeth. Only this time, they were permanent, though slightly undergrown. I quickly noticed that the extended residency of the original two had taken its aesthetic toll on my smile; not only did I not have a glorious, full-on hillbilly gap in the front of my mouth, but I had also been left with an unexpected present. My upper row of teeth was now the site of a stunning underbite that would see me through another year and a half of elementary school (and, unfortunately, elementary school yearbook photos).
I didn’t pay too much attention to the inevitable photographic implications of this dental development. I was too distressed about the state of my front teeth – namely, the fact that they were visible. Surely, I feared, that would disqualify me from singing with the gap-wielding select. Still, I noted after closer inspection that the teeth weren’t fully grown in… and that had to count for something, right? And I had just lost my two front teeth… I may not have had a black hole in the center of my smile, but at the very least, I had a metaphorical space, a sorely-missed phantom gap. I reasoned: wearing a strap-on wooden leg wouldn’t diminish the significance of the loss of the real thing, and neither would the timid presence of my back-set permanent teeth.
With this logical argument soundly in place, I returned to choir practice ready to fight for a position in the toothless ensemble. Despite encountering some opposition from skeptical teachers (“Really? You don’t seem to have as noticeable a gap as some of the other kids–” “BUT I LOST MY TEETH I SWEAR IT THEY JUST TOOK FOREVER TO FALL AND–”), I managed to weasel my way into the ranks of the privileged, frontal-space-sporting vocalists. During the actual performance, my voice soared through my underbite as loudly and liltingly as the others’ through their gaping holes, and with as much projectile saliva on the line “Sister Suzy sitting on a thistle” as the next person. I stretched my grin wide, showing off my phantom gap as I sang:
All I want for Christhmasth isth my two front teeth,
My two front teeth,
Sthee my two front teeth?
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth,
Then I could wish you Merry Christhmasth!
