[size=18pt]My Mother’s Teeth[/size]
In remembrance of my belloved mother Mrs. Gladys Eke on Mother's Day.


I love to smile and laugh a lot even though I shouldn’t, because of my bad dentition.
Yes, I have a glaring diastema and it welcomes you with my big grin.
“But you still look handsome,” she said with a smile.
Yes, I am a man with a pretty face, but with a big gap in my front teeth that makes me less attractive?
I want toothpaste commercial teeth for a toothpaste commercial smile and not the disjointed teeth for a role in goofy movie.
She giggled in amusement as I showed them.
“You don’t need your teeth to kiss me. I love your sweet lips,” she smirked and then kissed me.
Yes, I know I have beautiful brown lips, but wait until you see the big gap in my front teeth.
“Your teeth are not big, except those two stubborn ones that are not balanced with the rest. But great for a cheesy smile,” she said and smirked again.
I love everything about my mouth, except my teeth.
“But they remind me of your sweet mother. But she was not like Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘gap-toothed wife of Bath’ in his Canterbury Tales,” she said with a chuckle.
Yeah. But I am not my mother.
My father had perfect teeth, but God gave me my mother’s funny teeth.
She laughed out aloud.
But I was not joking.
"Your mother was a beautiful woman with what the French call ‘dents du bonheur’, lucky teeth," she said.
Yeah. A beautiful woman with a big gap in her front teeth that was amusing whenever she opened her mouth. She would have been in Les Blank's “Gap-Toothed Women” documentary.
“But your teeth have not stopped you from saying the truth,” she said.
The truth is I don’t like my teeth.
“Just let them be and don’t let them bother you. Diastemata are common. I can mention twenty celebrities with diastema. Country singer Charley Pride, models Lauren Hutton and Jessica Hart, American television news reporter and anchor Michelle Charlesworth, American football player Michael Strahan, actress Anna Paquin, actors Ernest Borgnine, Terry-Thomas and Zac Efron, songstress Madonna, singer-songwriter Elton John, rock musician Flea, Eduardo Skinner the Spanish underground London based photographer, late night show host David Letterman, professional wrestler and former TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bobby Roode, and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,” she said.
Wow! The gap-toothed celebrity club. What of Mike Tyson? And you want to include me too? But mine is bothering me and I will have to fix it soon..
“How would you do that? Pull the stubborn teeth out of your mouth or wear braces?”
I am going to see Dr. Carrière, the orthodontist down the street to correct them for me.
“Why do you want a new set of teeth? Planning to seduce a new girl?”
No. I am not correcting my disjointed teeth for any new woman.
Just for my own feel good factor.
“I hope you will love them?”
Yes. I have had enough of my mother’s teeth.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, Tuesday November 13, 2012. Shomolu, Lagos, Nigeria.