Chapter 6 – Hello, Mr. Chipped

During my 4^th-grade year at St. Clare, any time the weather permitted, the boys in our class played slow-pitch baseball during lunchtime or after school. We’d walk out onto the combination playground/parking lot in our school uniforms and dress shoes, carrying our books and baseball gloves. (Apparently at that point in American history, the notion of separate spaces for kids to play and for cars to be parked had yet to be popularized.) When there were no cars parked out there, we played baseball on the expansive blacktop, which had bases painted on it – in the same orangey color as the parking-space lines.

            I don’t recall having especially good reflexes at that age, but I must have – we all must have – because while a line-drive baseball takes a wonderfully predictable bounce off a blacktop, it comes up off the deck in a hurry.

            When enough cars were parked on the blacktop to interfere with our games, we’d play on the grass field behind the convent. Now I’m not going to say that field was dry, but on a windy day it did remind us of old photos we had seen of the Dust Bowl. When more than 18 guys showed up for a pick-up game, we’d split up into two games, with two home plates set up in opposite corners of that field.

            During one of those lunchtime baseball games I was standing on the sidewalk that ran alongside the first-base line, coaching first. The main reason we used first- and third-base coaches in those games was so errant throws could be fetched quicker, and games wouldn’t be held up for too long.

            So there I was, bent at the waist with my hands resting just above my knees, coaching first base, when someone in the other game hit a towering fly ball into our game’s air space. FYI, baseball etiquette dictated that whenever a ball from one baseball game entered the field of play of another game, time was called in the game that had been intruded upon until the fielder from the other game: retrieved said ball, heaved it to the cutoff man, and safely exited the intruded-upon field. Usually when this happened, the intruding ball just harmlessly rolled into the adjacent field of play, and the players in the intruded-upon game, backed off from the rolling ball. But that towering shot hit on that particular day turned out to be anything but harmless.

            Amazingly, it sailed just beyond our field of play on a fly. Even more amazingly, that damned ball bounced on the sidewalk right in front of me, and proceeded to deliver a stunning uppercut (with over 2,000 years of physics on its side) squarely on the underside of my chinny-chin-chin.
            I was so shocked and startled by the blow that I was unable to suppress the 4th-grade-Catholic-schoolboy-verbal-grenade I launched with extreme prejudice in the general direction of the batter of that well-hit ball who was undoubtedly in mid-home-run trot. (Readers who might be offended by rough language should skip the next sentence. – Ed.) “Ya big nut!” I bellowed, not giving a hoot about who in tarnation heard my explosive outburst of unbridled petulance.

            And while I can’t recall crying on that occasion, if I were to hazard an educated guess based on innumerable previous and subsequent experiences, I would imagine that I cried like a colicky-baby-who-had-just-been-stuck-with-a-diaper-pin-by-an-inept-parent every step of the way to the principal’s office. There, “The Three B’s” of 1960’s-state-of-the-art-Catholic-school-medical-care were kept at the ready to treat everything from scraped knees to compound fractures – Bactine^®, Band-Aids^® and Bufferin^®.

            And while Principal Sister Joseph Therese was very nice, I was pretty sure the “D.D.S.” after her name stood for “Divine Dominican Sisters,” not “Doctor of Dental Surgery.” However, despite her lack of experience in triage dentistry, rather than calling for a trained medical professional, she decided to treat me herself.

            The good sister sat me down and showed me a small vial, about the size of a Chapstick^®. “It tastes like ham,” she assured me, apparently unaware of the fact that I had never really been a big fan of ham, and had been eating it under minor duress my entire life. But because I was reasonably certain that Sister J.T. did not have an alternate little bottle of anesthetic agent that tasted like Mountain Dew^® or Milk Duds^® or Razzles^®, I kept my mouth shut until she asked me to open it.

            Then, with total disregard for best medical practices, she was kind enough to rub that liquid on my chipped teeth with her bare finger. And overwhelmed with gratitude, I was kind enough to not tell her that the numbing medication didn’t taste like ham – it tasted like shit. And if I had said that, the next thing that would have made contact with my teeth would most assuredly have been a bar of soap, and the heretofore cordial tone of my visit to the Principal’s office would have most certainly been irrevocably tainted.

            Epilogue: During my subsequent visit to our family dentist, Dr. Cruickshank, I was informed that since the damage done to my teeth had only been of a cosmetic nature, no action would be taken to repair my pearly whites. (Actually, my parents were told this, not me. Because apparently at that point in American history, doctors were not allowed to speak directly with their patients.) And over the years a litany of dentists have concurred, contending that if my snaggle teeth never caused any physical discomfort, it would be best to just leave them as they are today – horrifyingly chipped.

            And even though I never found out who hit that monstrous shot which led to that freak accident so many years ago, whoever he was, he made quite an impression on me. Quite an impression.