in the side of your jaw like a vacant lot. Your tongue keeps going
over there to see if it can recognize the old place by the hole
where the foundations used to be. You never realized before what a
basement there was to a tooth.

As you come out you pass a fresh victim going in and you see the
dentist welcome him and then turn to crank up his motor and you
hear the canary tuning up with a new line of v-shaped twitters.
And you are glad that he is the one who is going in and that you
are the one who is coming out.

Science tells us that the teeth are the hardest things in the human
composition, which is all very well as far as it goes, but what
science should do is to go on and finish the sentence. It means
the hardest to keep.





Hair




As I remarked in the preceding chapter of this work, one of the
pleasantest features about being born is that we are born without
teeth and other responsibilities. Teeth, like debts and
installment payments, come along later on. It is the same way
with hair.