One of my teeth exploded at 12:45 a.m. this morning. This is a great time to have a tooth explode, because there's no one anywhere that can help you. The best you can do is call the dental office and listen to the voicemail of the dental office manager telling you that the office isn't opened. Sometimes it's reassuring just to hear the message reminding you that yes, they ARE in the office between 9 and 5 and NO, they are NOT in the office at 12:45 a.m. Thank you for calling. If this is a Dental Emergency we're in the office between 9 and 5.

The explosion happened during a bowl of Chocolate-Road Gravel Extravaganza™ Ice Cream. It's a new Ben and Jerry's flavor: chocolate ice cream, marshmallow bits, toffee, caramel, shredded cutlery, world war II bullets and gravel from construction sites. Before you say anything, yes I eat around the toffee bits, those things are brutal on fillings.

Okay I made that up. It was a home made concoction of vanilla ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. Not frozen at 38 Below (ha) Cookie Dough, but relatively soft and harmless not-really-even-chilled cookie dough. I was sitting there, all defenseless like, when one bite later I knew I either had split a tooth into several pieces or someone at the factory had slipped china into my ice cream.

(I'll give you a few minutes now to get your Super Wince™ out of the way. I, myself, need to get more Kleenex®. Okay, let's continue.)

The next thirty seconds (as I tried to figure out what just happened) were very stressful. Traumatic, even. Twenty-eight seconds were spent considering all of the possibilities and options, and running through the price tags like a contestant on the Price is Right. ("And I'll buy three Rice-a-Ronis...") The last two seconds was when I actually ran my tongue along my teeth. Yup, big hole.

I don't know about you, but one of my frequent reoccurring dreams is the All of Your Teeth Just Fell Out dream. I'm not sure why I have this. It's probably a very well-known reoccurring dream, like the dream where you're sitting in a diner and you want to order a bacon-lettuce-tomato burger and then the waiter comes up and it's Gary Coleman from Diff'rent Strokes and you realize that you are, in fact, Todd Bridges and Gary looks at you and before you can even order says, "What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?" So having a tooth explode for NGR (no good reason) is just going to make me have that dream all of the time now. (The dream about the teeth falling out, not Gary Coleman. Try to keep up.)

I summoned all of my Boy Scout™ Skills, collected what was left of my tooth in a little Ziploc® baggie and did what every Boy Scout does in this sort of a situation. I cried like a little girl. Okay I made that up. Really. I went to Google and started searching for things like "Broken Tooth," "What Do You Do If You Have a Broken Tooth at 12:45 a.m.," "How Do Dentists Fix A Broken Tooth and How Much Will It Cost Me," and "What Does That Dream About Gary Coleman Being My Waiter Mean?" I actually found a great deal of useful information, all of which prepared me for the Dentist Visit I was going to have later in the day.

With nothing more to do and my appetite for ice cream dampened, I went off to bed. The first thing in the morning I called and scheduled an appointment. They were able to squeeze me in at 10 a.m. (how fortunate!) Alert Reader Tammy, who may or may not be my wife and who has great teeth, took me to the office and I was promptly escorted to the back. I settled into the comfy dental chair but nothing could have prepared me for what happened next.

The dentist came back, and it was Gary Coleman!

"What you talkin' 'bout, Willis?!"

(To Be Continued.)