some biting remarks...

Teeth. You brush them. You bare them. You show them off. You chomp and grind and grit them. You pulverize food into an unrecognizable pulp with them, just so you can fill your belly.

You use them to hold things, to open things…and yes, to bite. Most of the biting most of us do as adults, is directly related to eating or accidents. You know, you accidentally bite your tongue, your lip, the inside of your cheek.

But we’ve had our teeth for years and we’re used to them. They’re part of us. We know how to keep them clean—even if we don’t do a good job of it. For many of us, the pain of getting teeth is so far removed from our memories it’s difficult to understand what our children go through.

So, in an effort to help us understand what they are dealing with, they’ve taken to biting us. That’s right. We are under attack. From our babies.

I’ll give you an example. Jaxon is almost a year old. He officially has 3 make that 4 teeth. These are fairly new pieces of “technology” to him and he is rapidly learning how best to use them through much trial and error…mainly on my arm. What started off as slobbery, open-mouthed kisses on my arm or leg have officially turned into full-on oral assaults to my epidermis.

And I have the whelps and bruises to prove it.

The worst part is, when I tell him no, he gives a slight giggle. Like he thinks it’s funny. Great.

Oh, I know. He thinks he’s winning. But I will not be ground to a powdery dust by the technological advances of my 11 month old.

It’s two things, really. First of all, they’re new and he wants to see what they can do. I mean, it’s human nature. You get new clothes, you wanna show them off. You learn some new information, you wanna use it. Secondly, it hurts. Not only are there permanent (well, semi-permanent) foreign objects in his mouth that didn’t used to be there, but they bring with them a world of pain. How is a soon-to-be-toddler supposed to ignore that?

Back in the day, I would’ve been told to rub some whiskey on his gums. That’ll do the trick. And probably turn him into an alcoholic…just kidding. Now we would consider that a definite wrong thing to do. So instead, we give them cold, malleable things to chew on. We give them toys and try to keep them distracted. We give them homeopathic remedies and man-made medicines. All in an effort to help them through this phase in their life, hopefully giving them some relief and rest. And hopefully us, too.

So our goal is to get through it, sanity intact and free of lacerations and combat wounds. Their goal is to enter the world of the non-pureed, mashed-to-a-paste omnivore. It seems their goal is much more easily attainable than ours. Could it be that we are destined to be on the losing team? The universe can’t be that fiendish. Could it?

We start off as rebellious little arm-biters, gnawing on everything in sight. But slowly, through the years we become complacent. We have assembly-line education keeping us coloring inside the lines, societal norms and regulations streaming into our brains via technology, and the pressures of becoming a “success” in a world full of adults who’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a kid. And we suddenly find ourselves on the front lines. But on the other side.  Ironic, isn’t it? Maybe the universe is brutal, cold, and calculating. Or maybe it’s just the cycle of life.