Give me dentures, or I'll gum your earlobes off!

My, what nice teeth you have, grandma!

Incredibly, false teeth have been around for centuries. Apparently, Egyptians wired real teeth together with gold. Ancient Mexicans used wolf teeth, jamming them into the empty sockets of the happy victims. Japan has the oldest known dentures, made from the Japanese Box tree and were worn by a princess. In the United States, George Washington had a set of ivory dentures. Losing your teeth isn't the end of the world.

 

Back when I was a kid, I loved seeing elderly pop out their teeth and show them to me. It was like a magic trick. Plus, there was the hilarity of seeing grandma drop her choppers into the Christmas pie. Yup, lots of fun. Now that I'm older, those events aren't quite as amusing, though I still laugh when funny videos show it. Sure, buying a new set is a definite pain, so that's not funny at all.

 

What's really impressive is how adaptable we human beings are. I can't imagine shoving a wolf's tooth into my jaw, yet there were those who have. It just goes to show how far we are willing to go, just to fix an injury or make things right. Maybe that's another part of the magic of the human spirit: going to incredible lengths to fix the broken.

 

- M