Teeth aren't bones

Last night, in the hour-long lull between Dr. D’s furious Step 1 Boards cramming and the blissful head-meets-pillow moment, my husband and I were cozied up on our living room couch, sharing our days’ events.

As we discussed the general overarching themes of the day (Dr. D’s being “cancer sucks” and mine being “having a 36-inch inseam also sucks, but not as much as cancer”), my diatribe about designers being too cheap to use additional fabric to make extra-long jeggings was interrupted by the obnoxious, fingers-on-chalkboard sound of our dog’s teeth on his bone.

“…and I have no idea why I seem to be the only one with this problem, because obviously models must have long—how in the holy HECK does he still have teeth left in his mouth?!”

I picked up one end of the bone (dog still firmly attached to the other end, mind you) and Dr. D and I watched, transfixed and uneasy, as J-dog euphorically continued to gnaw his teeth rhythmically over the bone with a grinding errrrrrrrk! errrrrrrrk! sound.

One of the many reasons I love Dr. D is that I can usually rely on him for an answer to any of my questions having to do with science… sometimes they’re real answers, sometimes made up—I’m okay either way because I figure I’ll either learn or be entertained. So, I asked him, “How come he’s not chipping any teeth? Are dog’s bones really that much stronger than this cow/pig/horse/whatever’s bone?”

Dr. D has this kind of half-smile, squinty look he gives me when I say something ridiculous and he’s trying to figure out whether or not I really meant it. He quickly saw that I did: “You do realize teeth aren’t bones, right?”

…Wrong.

World. Rocked.

How have I gone nearly 25 years under the misguided assumption that teeth are just itty bitty bones that are lodged in our noggins? Shouldn’t I have learned this in a Magic School Bus episode or something? Honestly, the only time I ever really remember learning about teeth in school was in my (Texas) 2^nd grade class when representatives from Crest toothpaste came in to talk to us about the importance of using Kid’s Crest to keep away cavities. I must have been too engrossed in the free samples and the awesomeness that was Crest Sparkleman to hear the part of their lecture about teeth not being gosh darn bones.

At first I was freaked out that I might be the only person on earth who wasn’t aware of the whole teeth-aren’t-bones thing, but a quick google search was enough to set my mind at ease—I didn’t even have to completely type in “are teeth bones” because it auto-filled for me. Phew.

Anyway, if you’ve got some time and you really want to bone-up (hah!) on what makes a tooth a tooth and not a bone, you might want to conduct a search of your own… or you could just look at this diagram I found and note that nowhere on it does it say “bone.” Go figure.

In related news, did you know that it’s possible to get a tooth tattoo? More importantly, did you know you can get a tattooth (term coined by Dr. D) of Simon Cowell?

You know you want to.