Having been the proud owner of this fine incisor for many, many years, it finally decided to give up the ghost during a recent visit to the First World!!
Now Zimbabweans of my generation are not proud of their teeth, somehow we missed the boat as far as beautiful dentures go!! We are after all the Baby Boomers, post war, when there was no money for milk let alone for teeth braces aka railway tracks!!
Was there even medical aid in those days No gleaming white fangs in our era, none of those dazzling white smiles festoon our coffee and red wine drinking set!!
Oh well, we had a brilliant childhood so cannot complain can we
Being a first class coward, it is well known that only pure and unadulterated pain, can garner "yours truly" towards a dentist, and such was my plight when my front tooth disintegrated during a particularly vigorous chew!!
Emanating from 'Hardy' stock I decided to do nothing about it until I could get back home to my own comfortable darling dentist, who is quite used to teeth like mine. but the broken tooth was macerating my lip with every chew, and causing me not to smile in case I was mistaken for a witch, and so I tottered off in terror and trepidation.
It is easy to find a dentist in the First World, there must be one every few hundred yards in a built up area.
So off I went with my coffee and red wine stained teeth, filled with inferior black, noxious fillings, to a First World Dentist, and one could almost feel him cringe in horror!! After the first cringe he started to rub his hands in glee at the thought of all the work he could undertake on my toofy pegs!!
As they gazed in awe at my open mouth, exposing my mercury laden fillings, my coffee stained teeth, my dismal looking broken incisor, I almost expected the dental crew to rush off and don hazmat suits there was so much mercury in my mouth!!
The dentist was a callous fellow, suggested there was not much point in trying to resuscitate my incisor, his bonny blue eyes almost had dollar signs when he suggested an implant - but really can you just imagine what MASCA would have to say about that
He sent me to a very upmarket surgical facility called a maxiliofacial surgeon who was dying to coerce me into an implant as he stood over me threateningly, with his shining silver pliers!!
As several students, wearing scary arc-welding masks, flocked into the surgery to stare at my Third World mercurial fillings, I decided that the poor little defenceless canine, was indeed worth saving, a simple filling was all that was needed, and with a lot of thought for the loyal years it had served my exceptionally healthy eating needs.!! Does that maxilla facial specialist even know that it gave me almost 70 years of biltong eating bliss!
It was rather embarrassing when the denial assistant brought forth a card with different shades of available filling colours!! Ranging from pure pearl white to rather dinghy grey, mine matched the latter!! Poor old incisor, I almost felt sad except that the specialist had given me laughing gas and I felt that I might offend him if I started crying....