My Terrible Mouth Accident

Leave a message. Oh hey Pablo, it's Henry. Listen, I'm kind of having one of those existential crises right now and I could really use a legitimizing second opinion here. Um, how are we still in a job? If no one in this timeline has a mouth, then why exactly is there a need for two fairies? And more so, doesn't this make this very difficult to tackle any mouth-related topics in this world? I just don't know. It just feels like a big oversight on the part of the creator. Anyways, call me back. Please. Bye. Hello my geeks and peeps, my explainers and entertainers, my little oodle lollies, Rebecca Parham here. You've read the title, you know what we're talking about, and I bet you're all saying to yourself, oh Becca's got herself in a real pickle now, how's she gonna tell a story about her mouth when she doesn't have one? Shush. Chill out, I got this. There you go, problem solved. Anytime I gotta show you a mouth, it's post-its to the rescue. Alright, enough of that. Let's move on. Injuries, accidents, life-altering wounds that scar us physically and emotionally. Yeah, they make great stories, don't they? And don't we just love telling them? Dude, you wanna see my scar? Got attacked by a mountain lion. Fought it off with my bare hands. That's his appendectomy scar. Mom! Honestly, I've been rather fortunate. I haven't injured myself too many times in life. I mean, my dad accidentally pulled my arm out of my socket when I was six, I got hit in the face with a softball when I was in middle school and had a shiner for a week, I slipped in water in high school and tore cartilage in my knee, a girl in theater dropped a heavy set piece on my foot and I had to do the rest of the shows with only one shoe on, I broke my toe banging it on a platform trying to get off stage. You know, maybe I'm more accident-prone than I thought. I wonder how much football helmets cost. But my big injury story that I always tell people happened when I was very young. And it involves my teeth. I personally don't remember it at all, but my sister says she has a traumatizingly clear memory of it. That, and of course, my parents were there for it. Actual content warning here, this story might get just a wee bit graphic because, you know me, I've never been averse to a little bit of blood. Or a gallon or two. For the brave souls still watching, let's get this show on the road! When I was about three years old, dad wanted to have a playfort built in the backyard for me and my sister. He called over a family friend who happened to be a carpenter so they could draw some plans and discuss how big it should be and where to put it. Mom wasn't home at the time, so to keep an eye on me and my sister, dad let us run around the backyard while he and the carpenter talked things over. So in our backyard we had a porch, and by the law of the south, if y'all have a porch, you gotta have a porch swing. Which we did, though it wasn't a very good one. Dad was keeping a watchful eye on us, but as any parent will tell you, the worst things always happen when you turn your back for just a moment. And when dad wasn't looking, I managed to climb up on this porch swing. I stood up on it, and I guess in my three-year-old mind, I thought I was on one of those playground spring horses, so I began rocking it back and forth. And apparently I was not holding back. Ya girl was chasing bandits in the wild west somewhere, I don't know. Now, remember how I said this wasn't a very good porch swing? Well, good porch swings are designed so they can't flip over. But this one... Well... Dad heard my screams and he ran over in a panic. He lifted me up off the ground, and there was nothing but blood. I had bitten through my top lip, which left this handsome little scar later, and the force of the fall had pushed my front teeth back and up into my head. Without a moment to lose, dad grabbed me and Rachel, threw us into the back of the car, and sped off to the hospital. Rachel sat next to me the whole ride, holding my head back so I wouldn't bleed on everything, and being only five years old herself, naturally she was freaking out. And dad was even more distraught, feeling like the worst father in the world. But as he quietly panicked to himself, all of a sudden he heard from the back seat... Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O. And on this farm he had a cow, E-I-E... Well, I guess that's what you call more rebound than a kickball. Though I don't think dad appreciated the musical number. When we got to the hospital, the doctors ended up having to push my teeth back into their original position, but these teeth were pretty much destroyed. Oh, and when mom showed up to the hospital, she said dad was covered in blood and looked like that he'd lost a fight with an angry cat. Ah, poor dad. There wasn't anything more that the doctors could do at the hospital, but we still had to wait two weeks for me to heal before I could see a dentist. And what the dentist ended up having to do was give my front two teeth a root canal, and then fill it with a compound so it would stay in my head until my permanent teeth were ready to come in. You know, I'm actually really glad that I don't remember any of this. I'm already insane in the membrane enough as it is. Who knows how bad I'd be today if I had to carry around this childhood trauma with me. The whole ordeal had basically killed my front two teeth, and they turned yellow. Also, the next tooth over needed a half metal crown on the back of it, and given that teeth are translucent, that made the tooth look green. So yeah, for the next few years of my childhood, I was walking around with yellow and green teeth. Just look at this jacked up mouth of mine. I think I had these teeth until I was about six or seven, and as you can imagine, such a blow to the face not only messed up my baby teeth, but my permanent teeth came in wonky as well. In fact, when I went to the orthodontist to get braces in middle school, she discovered I had four permanent teeth that were supposed to come in, but were stuck up in my gums. I had to get teeth removed so they could come in. My mouth was a train wreck. Thankfully, I think I've finally got these chompers under control. They ain't perfect, but who could blame them after going through such misery? It's okay, teeth. You're good enough. That's why I never animate you. And for those of you wondering, yes, my dad did eventually get that play fort built. I'd have thought he'd think twice about letting his clumsy daughter up in high places, but eh, none of the Parham children ever fell out of that fort. I guess I set a pretty good example of what not to do. You hear that, mom? Your daughter's a trailblazer. Hey, Explainers, just wanted to say thanks to Eddie Bowley for lending his voice as the Tooth Fairy in the opening skit. I'll leave a link to his channel in the description. I genuinely love his stuff, so go check him out. I also wanted to say a big thank you to my longtime friend, Megan Mayer, for storyboarding a segment on this video. I'm really excited about this. She's going to be periodically jumping in on videos and helping me. We've been talking about it since February and it's finally come to fruition, and hopefully this means I'll be able to get more videos out to you guys more often. Anyways, Explainers, thank you so much for tuning in, but now I gotta tune out. Bye!