I knocked out a front tooth playing football with Albert and Sasha. Actually Sasha knocked it out for me. Walked around for two hours with a wad of Wrigley’s stuck in the gap until Sassafras showed up, much to Mrs. Claus’s chagrin.
“What size are you?” she asked, dumping her huge backpack onto the floor and rummaging through the pile.
“Size?” I asked. The “S” whistled through my teeth.
She waved her hand without looking up. “Never mind. You’re probably a 16R.”
“16R?”
“Yeah, 16R, see?” she asked, pulling a tooth from the pile with great satisfaction and showing it to me. “Go ahead, try it on.”
I didn’t know whether to be grateful or repulsed. I wasn’t sure how I felt about wearing someone else’s tooth in my mouth. The funny thing about Sassafras is that she has a number of missing teeth of her own. Mostly molars. And I never see her wearing anyone else’s discarded teeth in HER mouth.
But I tried it on anyway and it fit great.
“Thanks, Sassafras,” I said, “but why do you carry around a bunch of old teeth?”
“Like I have anything else to do with them. You ought to see the pile I have. Huge”
“I bet you’ve gone through twice as many quarters though, huh?” I said.
“No”, she said. “I have a lot more quarters, even with new teeth coming in every day..”
My eyes narrowed. “How are you managing that?”
“What?” she said, like it was no big deal. “You come back for the turtlenecks. Sometimes I come back for the quarters.”
