A few days ago, while rinsing my mouth after vigorously brushing my teeth, I heard a click in the sink. Whatever it was went down the drain before I could see it. At first, I thought maybe a crown had popped off. But on further inspection, I saw that a lower left molar had broken off at the gum line and was now submerged in the u-shaped trap under the sink.
If it had been a crown, I’d have felt the necessity to retrieve it in case the dentist could simply glue it back on. I wasn’t sure there was any point in retrieving a broken tooth. But then, I remembered that this tooth had a silver filling. I’d been reading that silver was at an all-time high —going for over $70 a troy ounce, whatever that is. Retrieving it would be like finding the Lost Dutchman’s Mine under my bathroom sink. It might help defray the cost of the necessary dental work.
The first task was to remove all the junk that had accumulated in the cabinet under the sink. It was like an archaeological dig. There was even a decades-old bottle of Avon Skin-So-Soft. I bought it because I’d read a web posting saying Avon ladies in Northern Minnesota were being overwhelmed with orders for that beauty lotion from lumberjacks and fishermen. Reportedly, they’d found out it repelled mosquitoes without using any harmful insecticides. I thought I’d give it a try down here. But apparently, the Mexican mosquitoes hadn’t read that web posting.
My next problem was finding a wrench big enough to unscrew the trap. All I could find was a large pair of pliers. Wrench, pliers — what’s the difference? Turns out, there’s a big difference. A wrench wouldn’t squeeze the pipe. The pliers did, and it cracked the plastic pipe. Oh well, at least I managed to retrieve the tooth.
The next day, I asked my gardener/handyman to come and replace the trap. He decided that we shouldn’t just replace the trap, but might as well replace all the aging pipes and valves before they also fail. After three trips to various hardware stores, he returned with $150 worth of plumbing parts. Forget defraying the dental bill. I might have to pull several more teeth just to pay the plumbing bill.
Right from the start the project turned out to be more complicated than he expected. He couldn’t shut off the water to the bathroom sink by simply turning off the two valves that are under the sink. They hadn’t been used for so long that the rubber washers had disintegrated. Plan B required turning off the water to the entire house. He shut off the pump from the underground cistern and then closed the valve from the roof-top water tank. To drain whatever water was still in the pipes, he turned on the faucet of the upstairs kitchen sink. Finally he could start replacing the bathroom plumbing.
A half hour into the job, he decided he needed the help of his brother-in-law, who is a professional plumber. The costs were adding up, and I hadn’t even gone to my dentist yet. An hour later, the new plumbing was installed, the water to the house was turned back on, and I paid the plumber. My new drain has a slotted cover over it so no other wayward teeth could fall down the drain.
As my gardener/not-so-handyman was cleaning up the work site, I noticed that water was pouring out of a rain spout from my second-floor patio. I asked him if he had left a hose running up there after watering the plants. He suddenly got a panick-stricken look on his face, and raced up the stairs. I followed, only to see him sloshing through ankle-deep water to get to the overflowing kitchen sink and turn off the faucet. We spent the next two hours wielding brooms, squeegees, and mops to direct the flood waters out the door, onto the patio and down the rain spout. Whoever buys my house when I’m gone will forever wonder why there is a high water mark on the walls of the second floor.
When I finally got to the dentist, she was able to replace my broken tooth by adding a fake tooth to my existing partial denture. By the way, my dentist’s bill was considerably less than my plumber’s bill. Keep that in mind in case you have any grandchildren who haven’t yet made their career choices. As for my silver filling, she said I needn’t have bothered retrieving it. She said silver fillings were only 35% actual silver. Apparently, a filling that size would hardly buy me a cup of coffee.
Oh well, the Lost Dutchman’s Mine didn’t quite pan out. I guess I’ll just have to put that tooth under my pillow and hope to get the going rate from the Tooth Fairy.
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