The lost tooth

My dad Donald first lost a tooth through playing rugby when he was a lad. He had a ‘falsie’ as he called it, and there were various stories about this, including when he was in Italy during the war; he was a corporal in the Parachute Regiment, and someone had ‘liberated’ a barrel of wine which was in the sergeants’ mess tent. Somehow Donald got invited along to share the spoils, and obviously partook along with all the others. At one point during the increasingly inebriated evening he had to go outside for a natural break, and when he staggered back, somehow he went between the inner and the outer part of the tent, and stumbled along looking for a way out. Apparently it was hilarious seeing this short, drunken form stumbling around, trapped between the two sheets of canvas. The following morning he discovered that somehow he had lost his falsie.

He lost a second tooth much later in life when he was in his sixties. He was a very keen golfer; good at all sports, he thought he had come to golf too late to get a really low handicap (the war had taken away seven years, the best years, of his life) but he was still a good golfer and a mighty and powerful striker of the ball. In the club was a rather stout bachelor,David, who had a rather mean way of making jokes about people, although he actually was a lonely and nice man beneath this unkind exterior. He always called Donald ‘Tiny’ because my dad actually was not very tall. This used to rile Donald, although he never let it show. David was playing golf with Donald and on one particular long hole, a par five, Donald hit a cracking shot but was a good way off the green.

“You’ll never reach the green, Tiny!” David sneered.

Donald said nothing but he thought like hell he would never reach the green! He squared up to the ball, glanced at the flag, back at the ball, and dug into it and fired off a cracking shot which landed within a couple of inches of the hole.

Unfortunately, as he swung through to strike it he clenched his jaw with effort, impounded two molars, cracking one through to the root…

… and that is how Donald lost his other tooth. He sunk the put though,  two under par…

My featured image is of Donald’s father Rue and two other golfers at the Gog Magog Golf Club