A couple of days ago I mentioned the infamous corridor at my cousins’ house which served as the stage to many mischievous acts. At the very end of this long corridor was my aunt and uncle’s bedroom, equipped with a TV and always full of children.
One night, my cousins Demetri, Georgie, Barbara and I were sprawled on the bed watching TV. We must have all been aged about 4 to 7 years old, Demetri being the oldest, followed by Georgie and the rest of us. Georgie was starting to lose his milk teeth so on this particular night, Demetri offered to help him pull one out. Barbara and I, quite used to their antics, kept watching TV, unphased.
I don’t know if your parents ever tried this technique, but it was quite popular to tie a piece of cotton string around the loose tooth and then tie the other end to a door handle and then slam the door shut. This was supposed to yank the tooth out quickly and (hopefully) painlessly. This was Demetri’s plan…and if you’ve ever tied cotton string around anything, you know that it doesn’t come off with any amount of force.
So the string is tied to Georgie’s bottom middle tooth. Demetri decides to eliminate the door from the equation and just yank the tooth out himself. To this day, I still don’t know why Georgie ever agreed to this. Barbara and I just watched calmly.
Demetri yanks on the string. Nothing. He yanks again, this time getting nothing but a yelp of pain from Georgie. By now Georgie is rethinking this plan. Demetri, however, decides there’s only one thing to do…he tightens his grip on his end of the string and starts running down the corridor! Georgie is thrown down on all fours by the force and literally dragged by the tooth down the corridor, howling all the way!
Demetri ran until the tooth came out.
The unfortunate end to this tale is that it turned out that this tooth was not a milk tooth, but a permanent one. So to this day, Georgie has a gap in the middle of his bottom row of teeth, and a lifetime reminder of brotherly…um…love.
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