My Father's Teeth

When I was a young lad in Australia, my father and I were constantly playing tricks on each other. It became a kind of one-upmanship thing that I would normally win simply because I seemed to have the more devious mind.

Me and Dad

Usually, when I got the better of him he’d refer to me as, “You little bastard!”

There was no irony in this—‘bastard’ being a common, often endearing, form of address in Australia. I never heard it used in the context of illegitimacy.

Dad was not a bad-looking man, but as he aged, his teeth began to let him down. They became kind of yellowish and were none too even. And they seemed to require constant filling.

I must have been around sixteen when he made the decision to have the lot pulled out and replaced by dentures.

Although not normally vain, after he’d been fitted with his gleaming new teeth, I’d occasionally catch him flashing himself a Hollywood smile as he passed a mirror.

Having used a toothbrush to clean his dentures for the first few weeks, he arrived home one evening with a bottle of Steradent. When he’d finished reading the label, a concerned frown creased his brow. “Hope it doesn’t bugger them up,” he foolishly announced.

A cartoon light-bulb turned on in my head.

Later that night, with my father slumbering peacefully and his teeth grinning from a fizzing glass of Steradent by his bed, I slipped into the bedroom and replaced his glass with one of my own. It contained water, some white powder and a few bits of silver wire twisted into odd shapes.

I arose just before his alarm was due to go off and waited, snickering, outside his bedroom door.

The alarm shrilled. There was a pause. Then, “Shit, me bloody fangs!”

I guess he heard me trying to choke back the laughter. “You little bastard,” he yelled. But there was genuine relief in his voice.

Mum and Dad-1940. Before my time

Some ten years later, Dad’s ‘fangs’ went on an unexpected sea voyage without him.

I was long gone and living in Canada when my parents fell on hard times. They didn’t mention this to me in their letters, but poor old Dad was forced to work on the night shift at a powdered milk factory. His job was to do something—I can’t recall what—to the sacks of milk as they went whipping by on a conveyor belt.

One fateful night the milk dust got up his nose and he sneezed, sending his prized teeth flying into one of the bags. It was whisked away, stitched closed and Dad’s fangs were shipped off to Japan.