Uncle Sassafras on Cavities

So I was lying on my back, agape, with various dental instruments crammed into my mouth, when my dentist paused, bent in closer and made that a scary little “huh” sound, the one that never means good things. Then he repositioned his mirror and took out a long hooked silvery tool that looked like the severed arm of a giant metallic praying mantis and pressed its point into a soft spot in one of my molars (#30, I think), withdrew it, nodded, and said the dreaded word.

“Cavity.”

So, fuck, I’ve got another cavity. Third one in a row. I’m a little worried by this sudden rash of dental decay, because my teeth have always been pretty good. My dentist would have me believe that it’s all the sugar I eat (a small sugar plantation’s-worth every day, pretty much); that I’m getting older, my teeth are getting softer, and unless I lay off the sweet stuff I can look forward to a mouth riddled with enough cavities to house a tiny terrorist organization.

Really, though, I’m not convinced. 9 out of 10 dentists might claim that sugar causes tooth decay, but my Uncle Sassafras thought otherwise.

Uncle Sassafras was a strange old man with a tree-trunk torso and a tiny, yam-shaped head. He had little black pinprick eyes and arms that were all lumpy with muscles and massively oversized hands that he used to crush squirrels and break nuts and strangle alligators. He wore white t-shirts three sizes too small, and smoked a bifurcated pipe, one bowl of which was always filled with tobacco, the other with weed. Every so often, he’d hold the monocle that he wore on a string around his neck up to his forehead and tell us that he was peering into our souls with his third eye, so we’d better not be fucking lying to him.

More often than not, the subject about which we’d better fucking not be lying to him was the location of our parents’ liquor. Uncle Sassafras was an alcoholic, and he was passionate about it: he’d spend his afternoons dispersing AA meetings, threatening sober people, and sending death threats to temperance organizations around the country. He liked to slip gin into children’s milk when their folks weren’t looking, and he’d spend long afternoons telling us stories about the glories of inebriation.

He was drunk when he told me where cavities came from, I think, but still, his words had the force of truth behind them.

“Larry,” he said (he called everyone Larry, because it was easier), “there’s only three ways to get cavities. One: sobriety. Two: celibacy. And three: sin. Now, when was the last time you got drunk?” I shrugged. I’d never been drunk, I didn’t think. “Aha!” he said. “And when’s the last time you scored?” I was eight at the time, and held females in the same regard that I held broccoli and school. So I didn’t have a good answer for this either. “Aha!” he said. “And have you sinned recently?” I looked down at my feet. I’d used the lord’s name in vain at school that day, three or four times, and stolen some candy from Hektor Davdison’s lunchbag last week. “Aha!” said Uncle Sassafras, nodding vigorously. “Sins live in the teeth, boy, don’t ever forget that. Every time you do something bad you’re giving those bastards a place to live. So let’s review.” He ticked them off on his fingers: “One, you’re sober all the time. Two, you’ve never so much as copped a feel. And, three, you sin more than Judas Iscariot. And you’re surprised you get cavities? Shit, boy. I’m surprised you still have teeth.”

Ever since then, I’ve aspired to drink more, sin less, and have a varied and prolific sexual career. Sadly, I’ve failed on all three counts. Hence my current dental predicament.

The theme of this entry? Ignore Uncle Sassafras at your peril. You’ll be glad you didn’t.