It was during the lockdown when I split a back molar on a piece of cereal in the morning. As I spat out the cereal, I could see half a tooth in the mixture of milk and cereal in the basin.
I tried to ring a dentist but they were all shut due to COVID rules and I couldn’t even get an appointment. It was so annoying only have half a tooth back there as I kept feeling it with my tongue as I spoke, ate, or drank.
It was then a couple of weeks later after lying in bed all night feeling the half gap with my tongue that I decided to pull the rest of the tooth out. I could get two fingers around it and started waggling it back n forth in my mouth. The more I moved it, the loser it got until finally, I managed to yank the tooth with what remained of the root out of my gob.
It was bleeding for a while not that it mattered to me but what did annoy me was when I was driving in the car and another tooth mainly made of silver crap they made the fillings from came out in my gob as well.
This time it was painful and the bit that remained was too small to pull out myself. It was only a short while later that the dentist said I could have an emergency appointment. I went in one day and the dentist said she couldn’t do much apart from putting a temporary filling on top of the stump.
I agreed, she took an XRAY, and did the job, covering the stump with something that wasn’t a filling but felt weird and lumpy in my gob. However the next day I started to get jaw ache.
Over the course of the day my tooth and jaw got sorer and sorer, and the pain ended up being excruciating. I rang the dentist up to only find out from someone else who had seen the XRAY that my dentist had put a filling on top of an infection in my gum. The numpty! I was in so much pain and all they could do was send me to get antibiotics from a nearby chemist.
However, that night I was in so much pain despite the copious amounts of coffee, paracetamol, opiates and K cider I could drink, that I was rolling around the floor of my flat. It was that night that I watched the whole season 4 of Lucifer as well as the historical event, where I invented the concept of a Skrewball poem.
I didn’t know if it was good or not and I probably sent it to Michele on Facebook Messenger, about 8 times, before deleting it before she could read it, before I finally sent it to her and let her read it. I was glad to hear that she too thought my Skrew was good.
My tooth pain had helped me invent the Skrew, and that’s how I became the famous Skrewball poet I am now. If it wasn’t for the pain I don’t think I would have ever come up with my first Skrew poem and I may have less teeth but I also now have a website full of Skrews for people to read.
© 2022 All Rights Reserved Robert Reid
Sorry for the pain but glad it created the legend that is 'The Skrew'
ReplyDeleteI remember all that pain you were going through, Rob. At least you have created a great way for releasing all those pent up feelings and agony you have experienced. Sometimes your poems are so close to the knuckle they are hard for a mother to bear 😥
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, I can't help but use this format and forum of writing as a way to be cathartic and let out emotions and pain that I could never ever describe to you,. I doubt you would have ever listened to me if I tried speaking to you about them so it's easier to write. I was never sure what you would do, but here I just rattle them feelings into words and it maybe sad for you to read but if I didn't then you wouldn't understand all the pain and things I have gone through. We are not the sit down and talk about our feelings kind of family are we? So this helps me express my feelings and I can't help what comes out sometimes but it helps me and this is the point of me doing this.
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