Chipped Tooth Character

My mother, a talented artist with the kindest heart I have ever seen, oozes eccentricity effortlessly. Her striking hazel eyes commands attention. It’s fair to say I adore my mother and a lot of my personality stems directly from her. Our flamboyant dress sense is one aspect of it, especially when it comes to jewellery. We wear a lot of it, and some it expensive enough to make your legs a little weak. She's always said to me: ‘Make sure you have no holes in your socks and have clean underwear on. You never know what will happen to you outside your front door’. I was getting ready for primary school one day and pulled out socks from the chest of drawers. These cool Super Mario socks, blue base with Mario jumping up, fist raised. The eyes moved every time you took a step. Hell yeah I’m wearing these! I pulled them on, big toe and pinky toe making appearances at the end of my socks, on both feet! I immediately thought: 'How the hell does that happen on both feet!?'. Urgh. This isn’t stopping me. I don’t have PE today; no one will see. My Nana walked my brother and me up to school... Lunch break bell rings, playground time! Some of the boys are playing football, I’m playing PacBall on my wining point. Just as I’m about to low cut this strike, a searing pain hits me in the back of my head immediately followed by a blunt pain on my forehead. Someone had toe-punted a leather football and hit me right in the head. Everything goes black. I gain consciousness in the back of an ambulance.

I'm being checked over and scanned at the hospital; no lasting damage. Just before I'm discharged, the doctor is completing a final assessment. I’m stripped down to my underwear. As the doctor is trying to assess for any paralysis or nerve damage, mum walks in concerned. She looks at my feet, big and pinky toes visible when sock should covering them. One eyebrow raised, lips tight, eyes slightly looking up to the heavens. I knew my socks are what I’d be getting in trouble for when I got home.

Ever since then, my appearance has been very important to me. ‘You only get one first impression Aaron, and people always look down at your feet’. My mother would tell me this relentlessly. I cared, just not enough to warrant any real effort to make myself look amazing. But, a situation happened to me that catapulted me into a spiral of self-loathing and deprecation.

At primary school, I think it was lunch recess; all the kids were outside. My school had two playgrounds. The small one was for Years 1-3 and the big playground was for Years 4-6. I think I must have been in Year 4 or 5. There is a gate between the two playgrounds linking them together. I was playing kiss chase with a couple of the girls, running between the two ‘grounds trying to catch them. In the big ‘grounds, a formidable brick shelter dominated the back left corner. Five striking, red brick pillars stood erect from the ground, topped by an aging thatched wicker roof. Many footballs littered that roof from over zealous kicking during matches. Alan the groundskeeper, often took to that roof to release the balls from their prison of height. I was good at running fast, one of the fastest in my year and school. My hawk eyes spotted ‘Lucy’, one of the girls I was playing 'tag' with. She was running towards the shelter! I ran after her, pushing from my toes to gain speed. She ran towards the towering pillar circling around it, I ran around anti-clockwise as she ran clockwise. She suddenly changed direction. I matched it. As I did this, my face, open mouthed, was a too close to the brick pillar. As she changed direction once more and I followed suit, my front tooth hit the brick pillar's rounded edge, chipping a bit off. I remember the sensitivity. If an ant sneezed, my newly chipped tooth could feel it. I flew up in the air, jumping up and down. My tooth felt like it had been replaced by an ice shaped central incisor. I touched it with my tongue and searing pain shot through my gum and hit my right eye. Lucy ran to get a teacher. I had three playground assistants swanning around me. After all the commotion died down, I thought: 'This is actually pretty cool. I could get a gold tooth!'.

When I got home that afternoon, both parents and nana were waiting for me. My mum had already booked a dentist appointment. 'Look at my son's face!', she exclaimed. 'Look! This needs to be fixed', she continued. 'It's alright man, it doesn't need fixing. It's character building', my dad finished.

Looking in the mirror, leaving my parents to their discussion about my tooth. I realised I have always hated the way I looked. The chipped tooth, made my feelings about my appearance even worse. The shock, disappointment and self-hate winded me; I wanted to vomit. I thought: 'I'm not a good looking boy, I'm ugly'. I have a scar on my right eye from where our pet Doberman bit me. It was darker than the rest of my skin; it made my eye look lazy and lop-sided. I hated the way my nose looked like a button, slightly chubby on the bridge. I questioned why I didn't have my mother's hazel eyes? 'Look at my son's face!' echoed in my head. Why was my skin so much lighter than both my parent's? Was I even their child? Maybe I'm adopted? Why don't I look like my parents?! I had so many questions, most remained unanswered. I was confused, really sad and angry. Angry with God, that he made me like this. Angry that I wasn't handsome. I was this scrawny, pale, limp looking kid with a lazy eye. Big head sat on the shoulders of a skinny frame. I was disgusted, and couldn't change any of it. Ugly, repulsive, pathetic excuse of a human being. Wasting air that someone else could use. No matter what I did, how I dressed or behaved, I was stuck with this, lame, inadequate, sub-par appearance. In fact, I was a healthy child. No allergies, no congenital health problems, fit and healthy little boy. I didn't know at the time, health is more important than appearance. Nor did I know puberty was only around the corner, and what it was! I didn't anticipate it was going to influence my already negative self-image. Literally the chip was made, the mental cracks would soon start to appear.