Your heart sinks when you get the call.

“Hello, Erin? Yes, this is the school calling. We have your son here, he is fine. His teeth, however….” And the rest is a bit of a blur, as I think the worst. I think hockey teeth. I think of his lovely (ADULT, OH NO) buckteeth decorating the edge of a step. I think..

“I’ll be right there,” I mumble, and grab my keys.

I’ve only been telling him to protect his teeth for…forever. When he was about two and a half, he tripped on the edge of the living room rug, and face planted on top of the coffee table. I had the edges of the coffee table pre-emptively wrapped; I didn’t think he would land on top of the table (we immediately went out and bought a “table diaper” which as far as I can tell is a hugely ugly piece of wadded fabric that collects cat hair and stains). The table wears the mark of two tiny beaver teeth, right near the left side. I went into a bit of a state, crying and blotting at his mouth, as my husband took over.

“Right. In the car.” We all filled out sniffling into the night as he proceeded to drive Mach-ten to the hospital, clipping some poor buggers side mirror on the way. I looked at him with wide eyes and said, “f@*k it. Keep driving.” I had every intention of going back the next day and leaving a note. Maybe I did…I never did. Sorry, whoever you are. But we had a toddler with a bleeding mouth and two teeth that were clearly pushed backwards…and, they sent us home with ice. Then the next day, off to the dentist, who said they’d right themselves or die. For the most part they came back in normally. And since that day, I have pointed out all the obvious ways for him to knock his teeth out. He’s since bitten into his tongue (bike accident), took a chunk out of his friends head jumping on the bed and colliding mid-air, biting his lip clean through, and generally knocked his face about to such a degree that I really didn’t have much hope anyway.  But I tried. “Don’t jump on slippery or wet playground equipment!” I live in North Vancouver, so the playground equipment is always wet or slippery.

“Don’t run down the stairs, you’ll knock your teeth out!” “Don’t stand on the bike rack!” you get the picture. Lots of don’ts, lots of sentences ending with “knock your teeth out”. He didn’t knock them out, just took out the middle of each, resulting in triangular shards that looked like tiny inverted mountains.

“I guess I will be a vampire for Halloween”, he said, between tears.  I told him he was very brave, of course, after making sure he didn’t do this to himself with a series of stupid questions.

“What were you doing?” Playing, with some friends.

“What happened to make you hit the pole?” I swung around, and my face collided with it, I was trying to stay upright and I hit my teeth instead…

“You were swinging? Where?

I have no idea why I asked him so many questions. I really thought if I somehow knew what happened, I would have a magical a-ha moment…I should have warned him about THAT! This is my fault somehow! (Mothers do this a lot, it’s a mild form of insanity) What I should have done was just hugged him, not asked any questions, not until later. I did stay calm, joking with him, and tried to let him know it would all be fine, as I carried a piece of his tooth to the dentists in a plastic bag filled with milk. (Old wives tale, but it seemed to work) Turns out he didn’t really know what hit him, as a chain reaction of boy-pushed-boy who falls into other boy-who falls into him happened. You can see how clear it all is.

On the way he got very serious and silent in the back seat.

“Mom, did you know that a megalodon’s tooth was about a foot long? And that they lived a bazillion and five years ago? And…. I did not know these facts. I think this is an eight year olds version of shock. Megalodon facts. In the end, dentists are amazing; you can’t even tell what happened. If we’re lucky, these will last a while, before capping or replacing. I said, “At least I won’t have to tell you not to knock your teeth out anymore! Because it’s done now, so no need for me to worry!” I smile at him, but he just groans and rolls his eyes. Sometimes I really don’t always say the right things.