Have you ever had a dream that your teeth were falling out? Apparently, it’s an incredibly common nightmare that, depending on which internet list you’re reading, could indicate that you’re worried about your attractiveness, your abilities, how you’re perceived, that you’re feeling self-doubt, anxiety, or depression, or you’re having literal dental concerns, or a million other things. 

I’ve personally never had such a dream, as my subconscious fantasies of disquietude are almost entirely about trying to get from one place to another and failing to do so (don’t need an analysis for that one!!), but my husband has tooth dreams truly all the time. He usually dreams that they’ve fallen out and he has to carry them around either in his mouth or in his hand, and he’s stressed about losing or swallowing them. Sometimes his teeth fall out in conjunction with another recurring dream in which he’s standing in a dirty bathroom that’s flooded with gross water. In the last year though, his teeth dreams have ever-so-slightly shifted focus: he now dreams about disasters involving Invisalign, which has been tormenting both his sleeping and waking life from the moment he began this particular pandemic self-improvement journey. Like the generic quest to “getting hot” or plastic surgery, orthodontic work has apparently spiked during the pandemic. Tony is among the herd, and his life is better and worse for it.

I won’t bother enumerating the many pains of tooth alignment in our modern era, in part because I assume that you probably know them, either having had braces yourself or knowing someone who did. It’s a medical marvel on one hand and an enormous pain in the ass on the other. For 12+ months I’ve watched Tony’s trials and travails and heard about his evolving tooth nightmares, but as we inch toward his orthodontic finish line, I decided to take up the mantle of Resident Tooth Complainer in our household and embark on a dental journey of my own. 

In brief, I’m getting an implant to replace a baby tooth that never fell out, because there was simply no adult tooth underneath to force it out. My dentist says this is fairly common, and for many years, various other dental professionals told me I might never need to address it at all unless I had aesthetic concerns. I didn’t, but nature had other plans, and the tooth started rotting, and other teeth started crowding in over it. Fun! 

The entire implant process could take up to a year, and I’m grateful to have completed the supposed “worst of it,” which is getting the tooth pulled in the first place. It was pretty awful, because it was always going to be awful, because it’s minor surgery, but a weird, unexpected joy has sprung up around it. For the last two weeks, as I’ve talked with friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers about why I’m not drinking, can’t eat rice or chips, have to inhale pain medication, or won’t open-mouth smile for a photo, I’ve been met with a bombardment of tooth stories. Everyone has a tooth story!! I’ve heard about playground accidents, naturally-occurring issues, the frustrating maintenance that comes with simply being alive, the frustrating maintenance of correcting past orthodontics that didn’t take or weren’t very good to begin with, bridges, crowns, veneers, cavities, braces, retainers, stitches, dry sockets, parents who kept baby teeth in little wooden boxes, a variety of Tooth Fairy rates, and anything and everything in between. Every person on this planet has teeth problems from the past and in the present (and as Discourse Blog editor Jack Mirkinson said, “If you don’t have teeth issues, you’re suspicious to me”) and everyone is eager to bond over it. 

It’s possible that all the Ibuprofen has poisoned my brain, but the experience has been a stunning, oddly lovely, and curiously powerful way to bond with people, several of whom I was swapping stories with after not having seen during the course of the entire pandemic. There’s so much wrapped up in our teeth: Money, mortality, body horror, vanity, privilege, shame, and pride. It’s a strange unifier that manages to occupy a space that’s personal enough to feel vulnerable, but not so personal that it gets weird to share. It’s fun—and it seems almost compulsive—to offer up your own stories, and it’s fun and enriching to hear other people’s stories. Yes, most of the tales are about suffering, and yet there’s a distinct “I Lived Bitch” energy to all of it. As I collected more and more of these exchanges, it felt more and more like swapping the same idea over and over again: “You went through minor hell? Hey, I did too.” I won’t turn this into a pandemic parable, but I will say that it had been too long since I’d sat around a table looking into someone’s eyes and mouth and discovering what made them a human being with a human body. We’ve been through it, and we’re still here. It’s been freaky, and it’s been nice. 

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And so, in that spirit, I want to hear about your teeth. We’re not here to one-up each other, but before we go, I have another story that I feel compelled to share: when I was in high school I had my wisdom teeth removed and they were fused to my jaw bone so they had to drill them out and in the middle of the procedure the power went out, and they had to take me off nitrous oxide because they thought it would be dangerous to keep me on it, and I sobbed in the chair while a very patient dental assistant held Kleenex to my temples to catch the steady flow of tears. So you know, I want to hear stuff like that. Also, that fun story leads me to a question of GREAT debate in recent conversations which is 1) what, if any drugs were you given in the moment when you had a tooth/teeth removed and 2) when did that procedure take place? In my experience, there is a ton of variation out there when it comes to these things. 

Finally, I’d also like to add that when I was in the middle of having my tooth removed the other week, the oral surgeon said to me, “We’re going to keep drilling because you’re not bleeding yet so we know we’re still drilling into your tooth. When you start bleeding, we’ll know we’ve hit bone.” To this, I said through numbed gums, “Bone bleeds???” and she shrugged said, “Yeah, bone bleeds.” This 100% true and I guess makes sense but ????????? I can’t stop thinking about it. “Yeah, bone bleeds.” Chilling. 

Okay, let’s all bond! Share your nightmares—both real and imagined—in the comments.