beastie wrote:And now Will denies it ever happened.
<sigh>
I did not deny anything except that I did not lose a tooth in a fight.
I didn't.
But I suppose I should stop playing with all of you over this issue and set forth the facts, once and for all:
As a 17-year-old at a school dance, the day before Thanksgiving in 1977, a drunk 19-year-old who had crashed the party looking for a fight ended up choosing me randomly out of the crowd because I was the tallest one he could see. He shoved his "never-met-a-bad-boy-she-didn't-like" girlfriend into me and then said something about "keep your hands off my girlfriend." To which I replied, after eyeing his girlfriend, "Believe me, I wouldn't want to lay my hands on
that." I then turned away from him to continue the conversation in which I had been engaged before his rude interruption, only to be blind-sided by a roundhouse right (complete with a large class ring protruding from its fist) which struck me in the mouth, completely knocking out my left front tooth, root and all. I turned and engaged my attacker for several punches, at which point the local police broke up the fight and hauled us both to "the station" to sort things out. In the meantime, a good friend of mine found my whole, otherwise undamaged tooth in a puddle of blood on the floor, and restored it to me in a plastic bag. From the police station (where the perp had been booked on assault charges and I had been released) I was able to make an emergency appointment with my dentist (also an oral surgeon and member of my ward). At midnight that night, he was able to reinsert the tooth into its socket, where it then remained, through later orthodontia and beyond, until its root eventually deteriorated to the point where a bridge was installed sometime in the mid-90s.
I suppose it
could be said, in a certain sense, that I lost a tooth in a fight--except that it took 15 years.
Also, it made me (or at least my mouth) somewhat famous in certain circles: apparently the oral surgeon's having successfully re-implanted the tooth was considered quite a feat at the time, and he (my friend and dentist Gary Lawson) had a recurring presentation on it at several professional conferences, where x-rays of my mouth figured prominently.
Now, from whom this story of my youth has come out, I cannot say. Nor can I conceive of the motivations behind it. Is it to demonstrate my innate violent nature?
I was the victim of an assault. The adult in question ended up losing his fancy hot rod to pay his fines in the case and spent several days in jail (both for the attack on me and subsequent ones on other people). Last I heard, he was a permanent resident at the Utah State Prison.
Perhaps, then, this story from my youth was dredged up to demonstrate the kind of ultimate fate that awaits those who persecute me without cause. As such it constitutes a cautionary tale for the majority of
The Great and Spacious Trailer Park©.