In keeping with the traditions of my Kentucky and Tennessee ancestors …

I was gnawing on a pork chop bone last Thursday night and a tooth fell out.

My wife had fixed the pork chops in a particularly delicious way, and I wanted to get as much as possible, why I was gnawing the bone. Plus, I always gnaw bones as much as I can. That is the way of meat-loving homo sapiens, carried from Ireland and Scotland to Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas.

I had lost a tooth from the same upper metalwork three years ago. I don’t remember what causes that one to come loose. It wasn’t a pork chop bone or any other kind. When that one came out, I called the dentist's office and reported the dislodgement to the telephone answering person, adding, “I figured I’d better get some Gorilla Glue or come in and have it fixed.” She agreed I should come to the office.

This morning, seven o’clock, I went in the new dentist’s office. My wife and I changed dentists because we didn’t like the first dentist's prices – way too high – and her insistence that we needed an annual oral cancer screening, because everybody was susceptible to oral cancer these days. Well, everybody is not.

I asked a dental technician at the first dentist what caused oral cancer. I knew the answer, but wanted to know what she would say. She said it was caused by a virus. I said, “You mean like the flu or something that’s just in the air?” She said that was correct. I declined the test, which consisted of the dentist shining a blue light into my mouth for about five seconds and then charging $30.

So this morning I went to the new dentist, where a technician took me to an exam room. I had my metalwork and the popped tooth in a plastic bag. She took the bag to the dentist and soon returned, saying the doctor could repair the denture. “It will take about 15 minutes,” she said.

That was surprising news. At our first dentist, the time was several hours. Cost for today’s work was $139, about $150 less than we paid the other dentist.