Exploding Tooth and Fukushima Spinach

Tootsie tells all to the Toothsmith…

Tootsie: My tooth exploded. Five pieces. See, here. 

(Hands over plastic envelope of tooth fragments).

Toothsmith. Cracked and broke. Not exploded.

Tootsie: It sounded like it. Suddenly my mouth was filled with shrapnel.

Toothsmith: Tootsie, you’re exaggerating.

Tootsie: I don’t exaggerate. I’m an expressionist. I explain.

Toothsmith: Exactly. I rest my case.

_____________

Voice-over

Tootsie told us later that there were actually five others in the dentist’s waiting room whose teeth had exploded. All had recently eaten spinach from Fukushima. Isn’t the conclusion irrefutable? At least for an expressionist. The Toothsmith (whose real name was Goldsmith), was skeptical.

...

Exaggeration

Deborah asks Jessica if she wants to do dinner.

...

Jess: Can’t tonight. Have to go to the dentist.

Deb: At night?

Jess: Emergency. I was biting into a chocolate last night and my jaw fell out.

Deb: Rubbish. You’re exaggerating again.

Jess: Only a little. Suddenly there were several teeth lying on the table front of me.

Deb: More like you lost a filling.

Jess: OK. OK. So which has the more dramatic impact? A jaw falling out, or a filling?

Deb: You have a point.

Jess: I have a dentist appointment. Can’t talk now. Gotta go.

___________

Voiceover

To overstate, to use hyperbole: these are alternative expressions meaning to exaggerate. The act of telling a story is enhanced by exaggeration, and for this we are given temporary permission, it is called artistic licence, dramatic licence, or narrative licence. The narrator is given permission to distort. Deb, holding Jess back in her story, is being a little too literal, doesn’t enter into the spirit, and so Jess has to work harder to hold and justify her role as storyteller. Perhaps that’s why she cuts short the fun and says, “Gotta go.”

...

Mercury amalgam

Jack visits a new dentist.

...

Dentist: Open wide. That’s it. Ooh.

Jack: Huh?

Dentist: You have quite a few older fillings.

Jack: Splutter.

Dentist: Those older ones are amalgam. Mercury. You suffer from headaches?

Jack: Eerh.

Dentist: I suggest we take out the old mercury amalgam fillings and replace them with newer non-toxic fillings.

Jack: aah..cost?

Dentist: Don’t think about the cost. Think about how good you’ll feel without headaches. You want to lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, don’t you? You really want a headful of mercury?

Jack: Aaaah?

Dentist: I thought so. Let’s get to work. Nurse!

...