Terrible Twos-day: Dental Edition

Once again Tuesday brings something in twos.

After dinner I felt something weird lodged between my back two molars. I fiddled with it with my tongue for a bit to no avail, so grabbed one of those handy little floss pick things—what came out was part of my tooth! My immediate thought translated loosely to "that's not supposed to happen," and I ran to the bathroom mirror to investigate. A visible chip was missing and a low ache was setting in. I've got a call in to the dentist—"Um, yeah, hi... I've like really chipped my tooth, and I think I should probably have someone look at it really soon. Call me?" Then I called the dental insurance company. The company apparently has never insured anyone of Polish descent and got the last letters of my name wrong, making me a "vslu." Granted we of Eastern European persuasion like consonants, but vslu sounds like some kind of tiny, horned antelope-type creature. I am not an antelope. However, antelope do have teeth.

Fossil Antelope Teeth Hold Clues to Europe's Missing Apes
Wear patterns on ancient antelope teeth have allowed researchers to reconstruct Europe’s environment 8 million years ago, when the continent’s great apes vanished. One of those ape species could have given rise to the human lineage, making the circumstances of their disappearance especially interesting.

Antelope Tooth Necklace
Unlike most single-tooth pendant necklaces, this piece contains five molars from a New Mexican pronghorn antelope naturally fixed in a piece of the original jawbone.