“To dream about losing a tooth represents man’s innermost worries — concerns about dying, aging, weakness, destitution and loneliness.”

- dreamforth.com’s dictionary entry for “toothless”

… In that case, I suppose dreaming about losing multiple teeth means that you are well nigh dead from worry?

This is my new recurring nightmare. I actually dreamt it twice last night, both times totally convinced that it was real—that this time my teeth really were falling out and we wouldn’t be able to get them back in. These dreams usually include a rushed trip to the emergency room, or the emergency dentist (I’m not sure if emergency dentists really exist), or the emergency something.

Now, to be fair, last night was also the first night that I had worn my retainers (which are supposed to be worn every few nights) in a couple of weeks. So it seems reasonable to infer that the aching mouth I woke up with this morning could have had more to do with those dreams than “concerns about dying, aging, and weakness.” But the dark streak in me finds that interpretation appropriate nonetheless.

How about you? Have you ever had a teeth falling out dream? Did you derive any meaning from it?

_______

Just for fun, two songs about teeth:

Happy Monday!

(to a Young Child)

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart goes older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow’s springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1880

• Average number of times between 10:30 & 11:20 am when a squirrel, holding an acorn, will pause outside the window of our basement classroom and bob back and forth: Two. (Coincidentally, also the number of times one side of the table will break into inappropriate laughter.)
• Things that seem less important once lying on the living room couch watching afternoon light play in the Maple tree outside: putting laundry in the dryer, doing reading for Monday, taking a picture of said Maple tree.
• Times when it would be good if someone came along and pried my fingers off of this world: every moment of every day.

I kicked and I screamed.

I plugged my ears and hollered at the top of my lungs.

But sooner or later, you have to give up…

… and admit that you are getting a cold.

*sigh *

In an imaginary book entitled “How to Write a Blog and Not Have People Hate Your Guts,” there would undoubtedly be a chapter dedicated to the prohibition of false promises.

This imaginary chapter in this imaginary book could easily use my blog as a case study of what not to do.

Take, for example, this quote from my last post, written approximately (*gulp *) three weeks ago: “I have a real, honest-to-goodness, more-than-three-sentences-long post about something other than photography coming soon, I promise.”

Ooh, there it is; the “P” word; and I don’t mean “photography.” Mom always taught me not to promise anything I couldn’t be 100% sure of delivering. I guess that lesson hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

So, look for a new post… someday. About something.

If you’re lucky.