I can still go down and come back up with the ease of Lil Rick.
But any hopes I harboured about not aging too fast were shattered recently while being prepped for a medical procedure and a nurse asked if I was wearing dentures.
Now, I still have the majority of my original mouthful of 32 teeth, enhanced by two caps and several fillings. And I perform my minimum twice daily cleaning of them as I have done from the time I was old enough to hold and manoeuvre a toothbrush.
As a result, the possibility of having to wear false ‘teets’ never crossed my mind until then as I saw a future mental image of myself hobbling from my bedroom to the bathroom and cleaning my bare gums before fishing a set from a water-filled container, fitting them into my mouth and flashing a grin in the mirror to assure myself that I still looked good.
I am fully aware that dentures today are made by fully trained and highly skilled technicians using state-of-the-art equipment to ensure that what they make for you resembles your natural teeth as close as possible, and causes no real change to your facial appearance.
However, I could not help but remember the “good ole days” when streets and alleys in around Bridgetown were littered with cramped one-door storefronts and back rooms where toothless mouths were fitted with brand new false teeth. Unfortunately, in too many cases, the people offering this service were poorly trained and with little skill, with the result that many of their customers ended up with very bad work for their money.
You could always spot unfortunate people. The mock dentures made funny clicking sounds when they talked and often slipped out of place. Worse yet, was when they fell out of their mouths when they laughed, coughed or smiled too widely.
You therefore found that almost all such victims partly or fully covered their mouth with a hand as a precaution while in conversation.
Perhaps the ultimate in embarrassment was for a person wearing such dentures to be giving a speech at a function or public meeting and forget his or her handicap, only to be reminded when he or she got a bit fired up or laughed too lustily, only to see their top row of teeth falling to the ground from their mouth.
Other reminders for me of getting older include being inevitably asked if I have a BARP card whenever I go to pay for a purchase or a service. Added to that is youngsters now addressing me as ‘pops’ or ‘gran’.
But I still have a way to go before all my teeth fall out, so let me say thanks not only to that nurse but to all on A5 at QEH who plastered my short stay there with lots of tender loving care.
One of these Sundays, I will tell you about the thrill of having every part, and I mean every part, of my body washed, cleaned and towelled with the same tender loving care.
Good thing I was not too long out of recovery and still very much out of it!
