We’re all familiar of the trope of the little cartoon kid with the black tooth. It’s the kind of thing you see on The Little Rascals or something. A kid with not a missing tooth, but rather, a tooth that’s just a different color than the rest of the teeth. 

When I was little, I was that kid.

I had fallen down and hit my mouth on a coffee table, if I remember correctly. I think the dentist had told me the nerve connecting the tooth to the rest of my head had been severed, and that effectively, the tooth had “died”. This caused the tooth to turn a weird dark grey color. The unfortunate part was that all those little strings that keep your teeth in were still attached, so I had to walk around with a grey tooth that wasn’t ready to fall out anytime soon. And yeah, it was a front tooth. 

I loved sledding when I was little just as much as the next kid. There was a hill by my house we would sled down. During the summer, we’d ride our bikes down it. 

One time I was out sledding with some other kids I didn’t know. I saw some of them going down head first. I thought it looked fun so I decided to try it. I’m sure if my mother was there she would have told me not to.

Apparently doing it once was all it took to completely hurt myself. 

I sled down the hill and went directly under a truck. It was parked and not moving, but I still managed to entirely scrape my face off on the underside of it. A huge chunk of my face was ripped completely off like the batman villain. 

Some of the older teenage kids pulled me out from underneath. They must have been really freaked out because I’m sure I looked like a horrifying demon monster. 

A chinese teenager and his sister (who inexplicably wasn’t chinese) tried to take me home, probably because they just couldn’t think of anything else to do. I was screaming so loud they couldn’t figure out where my home was. I tried to point to it, but they thought I was pointing to my neighbor’s house and tried to take me there. Eventually we got to my house. 

I went to the hospital and got x-rayed. I don’t know how I managed it but there wasn’t any broken bones or brain damage or anything. They said I just had to wait for the skin on my face to grow back. 

So for a few months I had to go to school looking like this: 

…As if the other kids didn’t already have enough reason to not talk to me.

Okay bye!

~Max G