PROSTHETICS IN THE DEEP

While visiting my cousin in Northern Portugal this week, he shared some stories with me that left me (ROFL) rolling on the floor laughing. Besides an orthodontist, I don’t believe there's any one person in the world with so many denture adventures as he. In fact, he doesn't even wear dentures; he is actually, a young looking 74 year old.

It seems whenever someone with falsies visits him, or he and his wife volunteer to give someone a ride, my cousin ends up on the most unusual searches for their guest’s fake teeth. 

Out of several stories he shared with me, I picked the following two, as the best denture stories I've ever heard and decided to document the events.

1.         Just before coming to Portugal from England on Holiday, on October 2001, my cousin and his wife offered an elderly lady a ride back home to visit her sister in Lisbon. The trip went well, for the most part, but her sister didn't have a big enough home to provide her accommodations during her stay in Portugal. My cousin offered, and she accepted, to stay at their house in northern Portugal, until their return to England. The roads leading up to Arcos de Valdevêz are fairly straight and well maintained, from Arcos to their final destination however, the nine kilometers of road  leading to Boimo, is comprised of over sixty sharp turns, necessary to manage the mountainous landscape.  Their elderly hitcher managed not to get motion sickness, or should I say, almost managed not to get motion sickness the entire trip. Kilometer eight was just too much to bear and she had to grab a barf bag to empty some of her stomach contents. My cousin pulled over, to allow the rather embarrassed passenger to dispose of her sour barf out the car window and into a ravine of prickly wild blackberry bushes. Just a few minutes later, as they unloaded their luggage at my cousin’s house, their guest realizes she's missing her precious choppers. My cousin's wife suspects she accidentally spat them into the barf bag and summoned my cousin to go look for the bag and search through its contents to try and find the dentures. After digging through the prickly bushes, he finds the barf bag, dumps its contents and among them, the choppers. Unfortunately, they were broken into two pieces during impact. After a quick trip to the orthodontist, the old geezer was able to get the dentures repaired and enjoy some delicious food during her stay. 

2.        On Augusts’ 2002 vacation, my cousin has yet another denture adventure, this time it was his wife's aunt, whom they invited to spend a few days at their home away from home, in Boimo. According to my cousin, his wife's aunt, gorged herself during lunch, as if she hadn't ate in years. Once the meal was consumed, his 80 year old aunt, retired to an upstairs bedroom, to allow her stomach time to devour its contents. Her 80 year old stomach muscles were unable to handle the heavy load and she finds herself praying to the porcelain gods, emptying some of her stomach contents into the toilet bowl. After releasing some of the food she had over indulged, she quickly flushed the toilet, not realizing she was also flushing her precious teeth into my cousin’s septic system. Once their guest awoke from her afternoon nap, she realized her dentures were missing and went to her niece in desperation and told her she must have accidentally flushed her dentures down the toilet. Younger niece quickly runs to her hubby (my cousin) to tell him of the incident. Being the gentleman my cousin is he wasted no time removing the septic tank lid in an attempt to find his aunt's missing teeth. My cousin was very disappointed to see the septic tank was nearly full, the disappointment was greater the moment his wife handed him a bucket and asked he start emptying out the tank. Bucket after bucket, my poor cousin empties out the septic tank onto the trail next to his back yard. I can just imagine the stink this caused on a hot summer day. To make matters worse, he got to the bottom of the tank without finding the dentures. That's when he decides to go flush the toilet once more, sure enough, out came his aunt's pearl white teeth. Sure there were some food waste particles stuck between some of the teeth, nothing a good tooth brush couldn't fix. As for my cousin, he swears he was unable to have dinner that night, as he watched his aunt chewing her food, with the same teeth he had removed from the crapper that afternoon.