It's time to tell the tooth

I feel a little bit bad. My conscience  pricked me and now I feel the pain of remorse. I said something that wasn't true, I told a lie, a bad lie. Having said this - I was shoved into a corner, so thinking back I guess I did have my reasons. 

It was Sunday evening and I had just arrived home. On entering the building my neighbour who lives below shouted me, "Demi!!" That familiar (oh what now) sounding shrill that bugs to high heaven. My eyes instantly rolled deep in my skull as I stood there waiting for him to emerge at his front door. You see, my neighbour loves to shout me for extremely unimportant reasons I don't care about. 9/10 times we will engage in coma inducing idle chat which usually renders me into deploying my honed fake laughter skills (see The perfected art). And nodding away like I'm interested. So, anyway, he called me and I said "Yes..." To which he asked: "Do you have any milk?" As he had run out. Before you judge him for being, to be frank, a peasant because he asked me for milk, let me tell you - he isn't a bonafide bum. My neighbour has recently undergone an operation on his leg so now he's in a bad way and is confined to his flat for six weeks, so he says. (Oh, and by the way, he thoughtfully sent me a picture of his post op' blooded leg. Via whatsapp. He's new to the thing and boy don't I know it). 

Now where was I? Ah yes, the milk. So when he asked me for milk my brain instantly had to think at a rate of knots which resulted in me lying, as I said with a shifty straight face, "No." "I don't have any." Which was a downright lie  - because I had bought some of the white stuff the night before. Two litres to be exact. (From Asda). But, and I must stress the 'but' I feel I must stress this because for anybody that knows me at all will know that I simply adore my cereal. The daily delight of partaking of delicious cereal is easily one of the most thrilling things in my hedonistic life. And when I have cereal I don't pussy foot around, uh huh - I get down to business. A large, large amount of the stuff is consumed every morning to sweet, glorious satisfaction. So, as you can see - milk to me is a prized commodity. It's not something I like to share if I can help it. I am afraid that I told my outrageously requesting neighbour a great big whopper of an untruth. But, to be fair, in my defence - he had severely tested my kindness and generosity and I didn't like that one bit. 

However, not feeling good after my act of badness my better self began to tug at my trouser and my conscience suddenly kicked in like Jackie. It prompted me into quickly adding to the original lie in saying that I also needed milk - and that I could get him some if he liked. (That was the best I could do for this audacious man). Thankfully he was satisfied with this offer and hobbled away to get me a measly pound. He better have only wanted a small carton - because there was no way I was adding any money to get him a bigger carton. I couldn't help wondering if this was another test.

On giving me the pound in scruffy loose change he then got to talking about something or another. My neighbour is a pretty jovial chap, so again this bout of jabbering away about nonsense quickly made me switch off whilst mentally imploring him to please hurry up. In my purple daze of non interest I looked closer at him as the barrage of words crowded the hallway. Suddenly I noticed his mouth area was particular gummy and spacious. As in there seemed to be less teeth residing in his chatty mouth. 

My neighbour noticed my perplexed look and proceeded to tell me that he had recently lost a tooth. Candidly stating that the tooth had been loose and that the previous day he had been eating cereal and didn't realise the wobbly tooth had fallen into the bowl of milk and breakfast grub as he was, (in his own words) "Yamming away." (For those of you who are not familiar with this colloquial term it basically means eating with great vigour). 

He then went on to claim that he had been enjoying the cereal too much to realise that he had inadvertently eaten his own tooth. I laughed, naturally. And it was a genuine laugh tinged with abject pity for this unfortunate man. Like really - who eats a tooth and doesn't realise?! What type of cereal was he even "Yamming" to not feel a different texture or indeed a hard crunch? Crunchy nut cornflakes? Rice Krispies? I couldn't help but feel a deep dismay in my gut for the plight of a man of whom I have to share air with. 

On processing this information I couldn't help but think back to the iconic scene in Honey I Shrunk The Kids. In which the shrunken runts find their way into the inventors bowl of Cheerios and in the midst of a tense, climatic scene were he nearly eats them whilst the audience is screaming (not so much) that there are children in the bowl who are about to end up in his gob unless he looks at what he is eating. (Or yamming).

Well, in regards to my neighbour he obviously didn't pay attention and now he is the embarrassed owner of a mouth devoid of exactly three front top teeth.

I didn't even bother asking about the other two. Although he did kindly tell me that he needed to get the swallowed tooth back, somehow. Chuckling away as he said it. For me that was my cue to leave. The mental image of him crouching over a smelly toilet basin searching for an elusive tooth is, if not utterly disgusting, then extremely ridiculous. 

Demola, TCC