There’s nothing like sweet corn and having the teeth to eat it

 THE TOOTH, THE WHOLE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH?

Well its “corn on the cob”season and this for people who grew up  in Iowa meant eating the world’s best sweet corn for a couple weeks each year and then the rest  went  into feeding hogs -then non-human variety.  

Now while the average person in the state of Iowa and the rest of the US spends 38.5 days of a life brushing their teeth, yet that as sweet corn eaters know is woefully inaccurate.  

You see when you get a small hull or “corn skin” caught between your teeth and can’t wedge it out with floss—you are going to spend 16 hours of waking time a day scouring  that tooth with your tongue.  How do you avoid getting the stuff caught in the first place?  You can’t !  Don’t worry about it! The corn is worth it! Sometimes  you have to understand the meaning of the word sacrifice right?

However, we have it made when it comes to oral occurrences.  Until  1867 we had no real higher ed special training for dentists.  Dentistry was a trade apprenticeship passed down by two other community professionals.  You went to the blacksmith and had him extract your teeth without any pain killers or if you had a few more dollars you could go to the barber shop where the town’s barber/surgeon was located.  Well thankfully it wasn’t  long until Harvard dentistry  teaching methods spread and  we were on the way to  todays less barbaric practices.  It didn’t Huron that methods. For putting people to sleep and numbing surfaces advanced around the turn of the  1900s.  Also due to the evolution of artificial  substances replacing teeth became a bit easier.  Before  this people who had money could get replacements by buying either the existing teeth of a healthy person  from them, try to find  teeth from a cadaver  or have teeth constructed from ivory, gold, silver, or even a hard rubber  substance.  

Anyway let’s go back to the eating of sweet corn.   There’s a special time of year when this special corn is priceless  and it’s coming upon us.  It’s why we hope the farmer’s get rain, why we hope the county fair  will  have good food booths, and if not we will find a roadside stand that sells  the stuff fresh from the field.  

I guess what I’m saying is that it is time to experience the taste of the corn and the power of your teeth.  It’s time to focus on a simple experience as it happens and that’s a big part of seeking peace and joy.  Okay  peace and joy with a bit of fresh dairy butter and a light coating of salt.  

And in honor of this experience….

In  EIGHT LINE RHYME TIME today’s word is  “tooth.”

As I recall my youth

It didn’t take a sleuth 

To see I was uncouth

When I first escaped Duluth 

Now I’m longer in the tooth

As I sit here in this booth 

I’ve traded Baby Ruth

For Martinis  with vermouth

Somewhere Between  Tongue and Cheek.