I have had a total of six permanent teeth pulled from my jaws in my lifetime. The first four were pulled when I was 12, to make room for braces (dentist said they were crowding my jaw). What a fun way to start a summer vacation THAT was! My mom completely babied and spoiled me – fixed Campbell’s cream of asparagus soup, made pudding on the stove (I forgot how much I love pudding until I had a package of it yesterday). Interestingly enough, I actually ran into my mom and dad at a local Kroger grocery store Thursday night, when my husband and I were in there buying my “Robocop food” (my name for the soft mushy crap you have to eat after you have oral surgery). When she heard what I was going to have done, she got THAT look on her face…the “poor baby” look (you have to know my mom to know that look – it’s all in the eyes).

In 1997, a wisdom tooth started giving me problems. That one had to go, too. For some strange reason, I decided to keep the tooth. I don’t remember if I ASKED to keep it (which would not be surprising), or if they asked ME if I wanted to keep it. However it went down, the tooth went home with me (and I still have it).

Now that tooth has a FRIEND! When I got another tooth pulled yesterday, I asked if I could keep the tooth. I wasn’t told “no,” but I could just TELL that the dental assistant thought it was a weird request (chalk  it up to my sixth sense). I figured I would not be allowed to keep the tooth, I did not press the issue. But after the tooth was pulled, she brought it to me in a small sealed “specimen” type baggie and put it in a bag with other things I’d bring home – sterile gauze, “cheat sheet” of things to do and not do after oral surgery, ice pack, etc.

I was chatting with my husband last night about why I wanted to keep the tooth.

“Is it weird that I wanted to keep the tooth?” I asked.

“No, not at all,” he said. “It would be a very valuable spell component if someone wanted to cast a spell against you. If they needed something personal from you, a tooth would be a perfect thing for that.” Keep in mind I was asking a fellow “weird” person if something I was doing was “weird!” But his answer amused me, nonetheless!

This morning, I took the tooth out of the bag and cleaned it up a bit, and took a photo of it alongside its “friend” from 1997:

On the left, the tooth I had pulled yesterday – on the right, the wisdom tooth I had pulled in 1997 (check out the size of THAT cavity)! Yes, I’ll admit it may be a BIT odd to want to keep my own pulled teeth, but they’re strangely comforting to me for some reason! Why would I want my body parts thrown in the trash? Or sold to 23 and Me so as to harvest and store my DNA? Hey, these days DNA could be quite valuable!