Losing teeth in MS

I've decided to complete the Memphis-Mississippi story. I'd gone to Mississippi on a quest - to conduct oral history interviews with former civil rights activists. After a week in Greenwood, I was finally ready to leave Mississippi. I just had to make it through one more afternoon. So, I decided to make a second attempt to find Money, Mississippi. Money is a place only historians would want to find. And, this historian failed. At least I got a good story out of it.

I headed out of Greenwood on a long flat highway bordered on both sides by cotton fields. Following my trusty map, I turned right onto a 2-lane road that ran straight into the cotton field. Brimming with confidence, sure I was going to be the only person who'd ever successfully found Money in Mississippi, I blazed a trail in my Kia Rio. When the road narrowed, my confidence waned. When the road turned to dirt, I hit the brakes. As I turned around, I felt something more than chewing gum afloat in my mouth. "Oh shit!" I said, as anyone would in this situation. I ran my tongue along my teeth and discovered that my gum had pulled a crown off of my back tooth. Luckily I didn't swallow the crown. Imagine choking to death on your own crown in the middle of a cotton field on a second failed attempt to find Money, MS - oh the tragedy.

As I held the now-detached crown with the gum still hanging on, I thought, "How am I going to put this back in? Superglue?" I got back on the main road and did what anyone would do in this situation, I called a friend in New York. To her credit, she eventually stopped laughing and suggested that I call the insurance company and then find a dentist. So, I called the insurance company - the northeastern-based insurance company. The woman on the other end listened to my story and replied, "We don't have any providers in Mississippi. We don't have any in Tennessee, we don't have any further south than Pennsylvania." I said, "You understand that I'm holding my own tooth in my hand, and I'm in the middle of a cotton field." She was unsympathetic. I said, "You've been completely unhelpful." I stopped short of telling her that although Pennsylvannia is geographically south of New York, it is not "the South."

I returned to Greenwood, back to my new friends at the Hampton Inn where I learned two things: dentists don't work on Friday afternoons in Greenwood and there's tooth cement at CVS. I got some of that, glued the crown back on, and off I went to do an oral history interview. It was at that moment that I became an historian! All weekend, I ate like I was in a nursing home - only soft foods, please. On Monday, my parents' dentist took pity on me and the gaping hole in my mouth and recemented my tooth for a nominal fee.

Fast forward one month: In an effort to avoid work of all kinds, I decided to rewatch the Lord of the Rings movies - the extended versions and extra features. In one of the "making of" documentaries, Peter Jackson gushes about Viggo Mortensen's committment to his portrayal of Aragorn. At one point, he said that a fellow actor broke one of Mortensen's teeth during one of the many fight scenes. Seems the guy hit Viggo in the mouth with a sword. According to Jackson, Mortensen insisted on putting the tooth part back in place with superglue and carrying on with filming.

At that point, I put down my ice cream and said, "Oh my god, that's exactly what I thought when I was holding my tooth in my hand in the middle of a cotton field in Mississippi." This can only mean one thing - Viggo and I are clearly meant to be together. Our tooth odysseys will create a bond stronger than enamel. Our love will shine brighter than tooth bleach! Our bond will fill the cavities of our broken hearts!

And I hadn't been drinking.