Denture Damage

         It was 11:00 on Thursday, which meant I was in the car on the way to my grandparents house so we could all go out to lunch. This had become a weekly tradition for us, ever since they had moved back into the area from Arizona. Then I had just seen them at Christmas and every other Easter, sometimes for birthdays as well, but that was never a guarantee. The check in the mail from them always was though. That was something I looked forward to greatly, as any teenager stuck in a minimum wage job is wont to do. But they had grown homesick, and wanted to see all of their kids and grandkids more often, so they had packed their bags and headed back to central Illinois. An idea for me to meet them for lunch, originally my mom's, not mine, had developed into a nice little routine. And although sometimes it was bothersome to have it every week, all in all, it wasn't that bad. I did love my grandparents after all, and they were full of stories. There was just one thing about lunches with them that drove me a little bit mad.

         Both of my grandparents, Bert and Minnie, were well into their 80's, my dad being the youngest of their children, and like many older people, they had fake teeth. This in itself isn't a problem at all, but it was how they handled them in public that revolted me. Made me cringe just a little bit lower in my seat every time it happened. You see, Minnie didn't carry floss in her purse, oversized as is the stereotype for older women, but instead she carried an extra pair of dentures for each of them. So if we were out at a restaurant and my grandpa had just finished off a peppercorn steak and happened to have one of the peppercorns stuck between his pearly whites, my grandma Minnie would ever so kindly point it out and his hand would dive straight for her purse. This is what always made me duck my head in shame and pray that nobody was glancing over at this moment. His hand would root around her purse until it lit upon the case holding both pairs of teeth. This case was an obnoxious thing in its own right. Oversized and bright blue, aquamarine almost, if nobody had been looking over before, the case almost always captured someone's attention. Plastered across the side of the case was the phrase "DentBright: Dentures Done Right!" in bright yellow font that practically leapt into the air. I hated that case. And whomever worked at DentBright and had dreamt up that promotional thing for dentists to hand out could kiss my ass for all I cared. As soon as my grandpa had located that monstrosity and plopped it on the table, he'd spring it open, grab the replacement teeth, and set them on the napkin in front of him. He'd then stretch his mouth out wide enough that you could sell him to a circus and claim he was 1/3 snake, and grasp the teeth that were already in his mouth and slide them out, ever so slowly. Each time, without fail, grandpa Bert would then look at the teeth in his hand, just to see where the offending piece of food was stuck, before placing them in the case, and finally putting the new teeth into his still gaping mouth. It seemed like we could hardly go two or three weeks without this having to happen. It was almost like those accident countdowns they do at warehouses. I always stood there, number in hand, hoping to proudly proclaim we'd made it through a lunch without a denture swap, but my hopes were almost always in vain. His wife Minnie also did this on occasion, but hardly as frequently. Usually she could go a couple months without getting anything stuck in her teeth, a large part of that being that she usually just ordered the soup of the day without another glance at the menu. This is how it progressed, month after month, until something just a tad different happened one day. Something that I still can't, or won't, comprehend.

         It was 11:00 a.m. on Thursday and without fail, I was on my way to their house to pet their dog and climb into my grandpa's SUV for him to slowly drive us to whatever place they'd picked this week. Like most people's grandparent's I imagine, they had their favorites that we went to often, but we also sampled all the new places that came to town. An informal taste team, traveling under the speed limit, in search of the perfect lunch. However, that day when I got there, a change in plans was announced. Minnie wasn't feeling well, had quite a cough, the weatherman who hardly looked older than me, had said the pollen count was quite high these past couple of weeks. It sure had stirred up a mess in her chest, for she was just wheezing away, handkerchief to her mouth almost constantly. Grandpa Bert had decided not to risk venturing outdoors, so we were gonna have sandwiches and chips while we watched old episodes of Cheers on Netflix. You might think a lot of teenagers wouldn't really enjoy this, but I had nothing against those old sitcoms, filmed in front of a live studio audience. Plus I liked seeing Woody Harrelson with hair. We had settled down to watch the show, subtitles on of course, neither of them could hear all that well, especially with the maid running the vacuum in the other room. To be honest, I didn't know too much about their maid. Not because I thought little of her, but it seemed like my grandparents were always getting a new one. This one had only been around a couple of weeks and her name was Sophie, that was the extent of my knowledge. We were about halfway through the episode, Woody Harrelson's character had just announced he was the arm wrestling champion of Posie County, when Sophie came into the room to dust all of the knick knacks strewn across the shelves. My grandparents had traveled all over, and had lots of paintings and little pottery pieces that lay around their house collecting dust. It was on one of these little clay pieces that Sophie must have cut herself, for all of a sudden she let out a yelp and was squeezing her finger, where I could see a small river of red already running down her hand. My grandma leapt up immediately, much quicker than I had seen her move in awhile to be honest, and was at her side in an instant. "Oh darling are you okay? Poor thing. Bert I told you that thing needed to be moved, the corner is all jagged. Here sweetie let me go get you a bandage." And with that my grandma scurried off to the bathroom. My grandpa had acknowledged my grandma's call to him, and had started to stand up, albeit much slower than my grandma had. He ambled over to another shelf, upon which was an ornate black little box. It almost looked like the outside had been lacquered and then trimmed with gold. Funny, I hadn't ever noticed that box before, but now I couldn't keep my eyes off it. My grandpa opened it up and started to pull something out, wrapped in a what looked like velvet cloth, but at that moment, my grandma returned and I glanced away. When I looked back, the box was closed, and whatever my grandpa had grabbed was in his hand, still covered, and he too started walking over to where his wife was huddled over Sophie, bandaging her finger. He reached them and tapped my grandma on the shoulder, pulling her back, just a little out of Sophie's eyesight. Quickly now, he unwrapped the bundle in his hand and I couldn't believe my eyes at what was uncovered. It was two pairs of dentures. Was that fancy case really just an overdone DentBright holder? A pay per view offer, call now and get one ornate tooth holder, impress all your friends with just four easy payments of $19.99! But wait, there was something off about the teeth. They seemed to glisten. I was still processing this when, both of my grandparents did something I had never seen them do before at a lunch. They spat the teeth in their mouth onto the ground and jammed in the new, funny looking ones. That's when I saw. At first glance they had seemed normal because they almost were, except for one small difference. These were fangs! I had no quicker realized this, when I saw my old frail grandparents, Bert and Minnie, bend down to poor Sophie's neck and latch on, teeth piercing her skin before she could even comprehend what was happening. Her eyes rolled back, and her body would have collapsed into the chair if my grandpa hadn't been holding her up with an arm that suddenly seemed too strong. I could only sit, horrified, as the slurping noises filled the air, drowning out the real studio laughs echoing from the speakers. And then just as quickly, they were done. The noises stopped and my grandpa let poor Sophie's body collapse back into the chair's cushion. They looked at me, but before any of us could do anything, my grandma spoke up, "Oh Bert honey, you've got something in your teeth."