Hard Candy

My mother-in- law recently sent us several sacks of hard candy by post. Inga promptly exiled them to the church office to save our children from a cavity invasion. Though I normally don’t eat hard candy, for some unfortunate reason, I decided to try a piece after lunch one day to accompany my lonely cup of tea. Although the piece I sampled wasn’t really “hard” by the strictest definition of the word (it was more of a nougat), it contained a diabolical surprise lurking in its heart. Just as I was getting used to the candy and had decided that I like it, a terrible sound akin to a steel toed boot being smashed down onto a pile of gravel emitted from my mouth. At first, I couldn’t tell what happened until I retrieved the piece of candy from my mouth along with several particles from one of my favorite molars. Come to find out, this piece of candy was wrapped around a tiny stone that I bit down on with gusto. It broke my tooth. The good news is, the tooth that broke had endured a root canal several years earlier (read – its nerve had been deadened), and, therefore, I experienced a minimum of pain. 

Thank God, our family dentist was able, with the help of a piece of re-bar for internal support, reconstruct my tooth. Her parting comment as I left her office was, “Only chew soft foods from now on!” Yes, I’ll have to remember to try and eliminate rocks from my diet.