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3 january 2001 |
pink teeth and crooked spines Toe-wiggling time! I've got a neato new review up! So I was strolling around the other day, and got to thinking about elementary school. Mostly, I remembered the humiliations heaped upon us unsuspecting students by our school nurse. Gym class and those paranoid little "health lessons" were the worst. Please raise your hand if you remember the little pink pills. For those of you reading this from outside the US, or who didn't go to school in the 70's, the pink pills were a public testament to the condition if your teeth. If you were grubby and/or poor, you were doomed to a day or three of utter, pink-enameled dental humiliation. Thank Heaven my parents were teeth freaks. For the unitiated, each year some lackey from the Indiana State Consortium for Disgusting Children would show up at our school with a box of pills and gross mouth stories. Our teachers would corral us into an assembly room, allow the lady to scare us into brushing and flossing regularly, and then distribute two pink pills to each kid. Woo-hoo! Candy! Ooh-ooh. Not candy. Chalky. Blaaaagh, ptooey. Once we had all eaten the pills, we were then checked out by the bad lady. If you had an indecent amount of plaque on your teeth, it showed up a bright pink color. Not quite punched-in-the-mouth pink, but enough to distinguish the brushers from the brush-nots. I always felt bad for a couple of my classmates, especially Lonnie. Lonnie was a nice enough boy, but so, so poor. In those brutal Indiana winters, he never had enough of a coat or shoes. His clothing was worn and dirty. It was one thing to look poor, but another to look unloved. Even at that age, I could tell the difference. And now he'd been given another reason not to smile. I have a difficult time making sense of those childhood moments. Between pink pills, spinal scoliosis evaluations in front of the other girls, and any number of experiments some adults conducted on us, it's a wonder we grew up with any dignity at all. Especially kids like Lonnie. He continued to smile at his world through rose-colored teeth. |