I Have A Dream!

... rather, I had a dream. It was last week. I woke in the middle of the night with the images of my vision fresh in my mind. Like most vivid dreams, for a short time, I wasn’t able to separate reality from the disturbing figments of my imagination. And, like all dreams, the seed was planted in real life.

Earlier in the day, one of the school boys came into the staff room with a scared look in his eyes and a tissue held to his mouth. He shuffled slowly to the nurse’s desk and was quickly surrounded by several comforting staff members who began to examine his face, tilting his chin this way and that, and talking in smooth tones. The boy stood, expressionless, muttering short answers and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling; clearly awkward from the outpouring of attention from middle-aged Japanese females.

The boy’s dilemma was not typical of a school-boy. He wasn’t sexually provoked by the football team or flushed down the toilet by the cheerleaders. He didn’t lose his lunch money either, and he hadn’t wet his pants. Rather, his problem was one that I had never seen before. His teeth were quite literally rotting out of his mouth. That morning, he had lost another one, and he had come to the staff room to find the nurse.

This particular boy has some of the worst teeth in a school of diseased chompers. He, along with a sad group of three or four others, have by far the worst teeth that I have ever seen on living human beings. This boy’s teeth are nothing more than jagged, blackened shards; rotten remains of once healthy fangs. After years of increasing rot, they are finally falling out of his mouth.

That night, after seeing the sad 13 year old kid in fear as his teeth crumbled away, I dreamt that my own teeth were rotting out of my mouth. I saw a detailed image of an insect scurrying into a hole that separated my bottom gums from my putrid incisors. And I thought it was real. I woke up in a mild state of fear, pressing my fingers against my teeth in a private act of worried vanity, reassuring myself that they were still intact.

That morning, I imagined how traumatic it must be for this boy who will likely live the rest of his life with few or no teeth. The ones that he does manage to hold onto will be black, diseased pieces of brittle bone. Dental work just doesn’t seem to be an option on the table for the kids in the countryside of Ibaraki.

After teaching at an elementary school the other day and meeting 6 year old kids with dark, rotten baby teeth, I wondered how a child’s teeth can become so diseased at such a young age. Knowing that these black baby teeth will soon be replaced by new, healthy ones, I thought to myself, while staring in bewilderment at the cute little Japanese kids with bad fangs, ‘now at least you have another chance.’ But the 13 year old junior high school boy with the mangled teeth isn’t so lucky. He’s used up both of his chances.

That morning, when I awoke after my dream, I found myself expressing gratitude that I wasn’t born into the Japanese lifestyle. Worried about my teeth of all things, I felt lucky that I wasn’t born in Japan, the second richest country in the world, and on paper, not a bad place to be born. It’s on days such as these, in the heart of the developed world, when you see a kid’s teeth rotting out of his mouth and subsequently have dreams about it, that you think you may need a vacation from Japan.