Anne Dickens | The Day After Yesterday

Watching kids grow and blossom is a wonderful thing ........ until they start losing their teeth, that is. And then it all goes a bit wrong.

To put it into context, I am not exactly what you would describe as a squeamish person. As the daughter of a medical Doctor, I spent my youthful mornings eating strawberry jam on toast, and poring over his weekly medical magazines.

So I am pretty au fait with all the procedures ranging from removing in-growing toenails, to treating genital warts. Broken bones sticking out the skin? No problem. Severed digits? I could quite happily look at the pictures whilst eating a breadstick and tomato dip.

Oh yeh. There is pretty much nothing that fazes me. I am more de-sensitised than a 12 year old playing Grand Theft Auto.

That was until Izzy's baby teeth starting falling out.

The first one to go was the one at the bottom.

"Mama!" she shouted, "come and look at this!"

I ran over and noticed that she had her hand in her mouth.

"Look at what?" I asked perplexedly.

"This!" she hollered, and proceeded to twist her bottom tooth 90 degrees in it's socket. It took all my strength to prevent myself from recoiling and honking.

"OMG .... that's GREAT," I replied, after breathing in sharply, and stiffening up.  

My state of nausea passed over Izzy's head, and luckily for me, her aformentioned tooth fell out later that evening ..... well away from my general vicinity.

Izzy was extremely chuffed; "it means I can get a visit from the tooth fairy, doesn't it?" she asked.

"Yes it does," I replied, "and the first thing you need to do is write a letter."


 So she did.  And the "Tooth Fairy" visited whilst she was asleep and left her 50p.

There were a couple of complaints from Iz that the financial rewards were not keeping up with inflation, but other than that, she was a happy bunny and we had a done deal.

But the tooth-shedding did not stop there. 

By far the most minging teeth to fall out are the top front ones. I now know this from experience.

This morning I was getting Izzy ready for school when she hollered: "Mama look at this!"

I turned to look at her, and she grinned; "look, my tooth is hanging on a thread," whilst wobbling it back and forth in a way which was (quite frankly) unnatural for teeth.

Jesus mary mother of god. Her tooth was literally hanging off a thread ... a thread of what I don't know.  I only know that yet again, I felt sick.


I don't know what it is, but there is something about teeth that makes me squeamish. What's that all about then?

P.S. 'What makes you squeamish?'  Come on, pray do tell ............................

P.P.S. I have a new video to add ....