Dopp Juice Archive

Dream:

Last week my teeth fell out.  Not all of them — just the ones on the left side of my lower jaw.  And they didn’t really fall out. They just came loose in their gum casings like a suction force had been broken. I tried to hold them in place like rocks pushed awkwardly into a long trough, but every time I moved my mouth they clunked and crushed against each other, trying to chew themselves to pieces.

It was ridiculously upsetting, but they’re teeth — impermanent little buggers that are dependent on their foundations to stay in place, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it once they were out of their holes.  What bothered me even more was that the whole thing mirrored such a classic dream image.  I actually paused to consider whether this horrifying experience might really be a dream, but then quickly dismissed that as wishful distraction.  I needed to focus on the problem, not escape from it.  So I just vented to everyone around me that it really really sucked that this wasn’t a dream.  They agreed and kept doting on me, frantic.

I dug through my iPhone to look up my dentist, but I have a new dentist, and I couldn’t remember his name. So I just scanned through all the names in the address book as quickly as I could trying to recognize one as him, but none were right. It was the middle of the night, anyway. I’d have to wait until morning.

A little while later, I was halfway to the bathroom when I realized I’d just woken up. Which meant I’d just been asleep. Which meant I’d either fallen asleep with my broken teeth or I had been dreaming the tooth crisis all along. My money was on the former, but I checked my mouth anyway and my teeth were just fine, roots and all.

I was more disoriented than relieved.

Today was weirder.

Not a dream:

On a public bus this morning, there was a young, tattooed man reading a paper out loud and carrying on a nonsensical conversation with the back of the head of the older, conservatively-dressed woman in front of him.  I sat down near that woman and offered some sympathetic eye contact.  She smiled in return. The second time I looked at her, she said in a loud, clear, voice, “I CAN SEE YOU’RE EMBARRASSED. OR ELSE THEY’RE COWARDS. BECAUSE I TRIPLE DOG DARE.”  I raised my eyebrows.  She repeated the same lines.  I looked out the window. She kept saying it: “I CAN SEE YOU’RE EMBARRASSED. OR ELSE THEY’RE COWARDS. BECAUSE I TRIPLE DOG DARE.”

I looked her in the eye and said calmly, “We’re okay.”

She nodded.  I looked out the window.  And then she said it all again.

When I got off the bus, I seriously considered the possibility that this might be another dream. So I did the most rational thing I could think of in that moment: I told Twitter.  And Twitter did what it does best: it. messed. with. me. (And so did Facebook.)

I won’t get into all the details of my personal day, but I’ll tell you it was unusual and surreal, and this did little to confirm that I was awake. But it did move through it, and time passed, and my hands were still my hands, and letters and numbers were readable, and my teeth were fine, and I didn’t see any deceased relatives walking around, and as far as I could tell I couldn’t fly, so I figured I was probably safe.

Then I got home and found out a barrage of jokes and news reports referencing a 6-year-old boy floating away in a hot air balloon that looks like a UFO flying saucer shaped like a chef’s hat and made out of aluminum foil. And I got there just in time for the shifting of the “He’s in the balloon!” headlines over to the “He’s DISAPPEARED!” headlines.

And the “I’m Dreaming” theory became a lot more likely again. So I started joking about it again. Ha ha. Funny.

It stopped being funny when I saw a reference to Drew Carey being the host of the Price is Right.

Drew Carey. The Host. Of the Price is Right.

THIS ISN’T POSSIBLE!

And apparently he’s been doing it for years.

I think I liked it better when I had no teeth.