The Tooth About TV Tag

Back in elementary school, there was a popular game called "TV Tag", where, instead of a base, you had to touch the ground with both hands, stick out one leg for balance, and yell out a TV show before the tagger got you.

The one rule was that you could never repeat a show once someone yelled it, and if you couldn't think of one, you ran for your life until you could.

At the time, my best friend, Laura Church, who had the same birthday as me, would play on the school playground during recess or in the morning before the line-up bell. 

One morning, the tagger was trying to catch us. Laura was ahead of me, and I looked behind me to see how far the tagger was. Unfortunately, Laura picked that time to touch the ground and yell out a show, sticking her leg out. 

Down I went, hitting the ground not with my hands, but my face, specifically, my two front teeth.

Crack.

I felt my teeth hit the concrete, and my head snapped back a little. I tasted blood, and I could feel cold air on my teeth that made them hurt.

Lip split and face scraped, I stood and realized I had a lovely triangle-shaped hole in my two front teeth. Laura and the other students stopped in shock, and the school guardian ran over to see what had happened. She took me to the nurse right away.

Some kids looked at me enviously in the hallway, knowing the event warranted the rest of the day off from school.

No one was able to find the shards of my teeth, and I wasn't sure they could put them back in place anyway. I wondered if the hole would let me make those loud whistles people did at sports events, but when I tried, it didn't work. Bummer.

My mom was called, and off to an emergency trip to the dentist I went (back in those days, you were seen right away), and during the ride, my tongue found the empty space fascinating. We arrived at the dentist, and I got a new partial set of fillings and something from the goody box he had when a patient behaved. By the time it was done, all you noticed was my fat lip and a couple of scrapes.

I didn't care. I had a new toy, and Mom took me out for fries and chicken nuggets.

After that, the kids agreed to squat instead of sticking out a leg when playing TV Tag. It made the game a bit more challenging and often more fun; It wasn't easy to stop short and squat with your hands on the ground after running full tilt. Sometimes the target fell over into a roll, and the tagger had to leapfrog over or become another school injury statistic. 

Laura and I still played TV Tag until the end of the school year. I never saw her after we graduated from fifth grade, and I never blamed her for the accident, because that's what it was. I wish adults were as forgiving as children. Maybe that's why God said to be like them.

Although TV Tag in my late 50s would probably require a medical team on the sidelines!