Perhaps you didn't know this about me.

I have a chipped front tooth.

It happened the weekend before my high school graduation. I was drinking out of a glass bottle (I'll let you cast some judgement here) when my boyfriend at the time for some reason slapped the bottom of the bottle with his hand, causing it to implode upon my right front tooth. Chip chip chipperoo. Embarrassing.

Of course, the dentist fixed it. But less than a year later, I was working for a cd/headshop in Moorhead, Minnesota. I should say right away, the owner of this place called it a "lifestyle" shop, and about 80% of us there were only further convinced we should never try drugs because of the idiots that came into the store and tried to impress us with stoner stories. Oh no! You dropped your $150 glass pipe in slow motion in someones garage? Darn it. Hey, here's an idea: don't waste $150 on a pipe. Just a thought.

Anyway, the owner, a man whose stature reminds me of NSYNC's manager now serving jail time, planted rumors amongst the employees that he could tune into the store cameras from his home. And there were also tales of the cameras following a select number of female employees through the stores (not me) in a voyeuristic fashion.

So one day I was moving through the stores, and the cameras started following me. I moved one way, and heard the little camera turn, the other way, another way, ooooooh creepy. My co-worker, Brad, joins me after enjoying his lunch in the break room and I fill him in on the ideas surfacing in my young female mind.

Mmhmm. Nah, REALLY? OH MY GOD. says Brad. Then I realize that the cameras in the store are all controlled from the break room. Ha ha, very funny Brad, I say. And Brad swells with pride, thinks he's pretty funny. So I decide that a trick is in store for him. From who? Direct from RUTH. R. U. T. H.

A month later, I am enjoying some very hard mints at work, and I chomp down and my tooth filling comes out. Embarrassing? Yes. But I get a great idea.

Brad comes in for work.

BRAD! BRAD! Check out my tooth.

Whoa. Says Brad. What happened? Well, I say, you know those thick glass hookahs we have in the back room? This guy wanted to see one, so I took it off the shelf and put it on the glass counter. Then I don't know what happened, I was going to pick it up to put it back, the guy was reaching for it at the same time, neither of us realized that the other one was going for it, and BLAMMO! The guy knocked the top of the hookah into my mouth! And it chipped my tooth! What am I going to DO?

WHOA. says Brad. Are you going make the owner pay for it? I mean...wow. I just. I don't know. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?





And then Ruth laughs. Sucker. Ha ha. Jokes on YOU, Brad, even though, in the end, I am the one with the chipped tooth. And (full circle here) I just took a beer out of the fridge and was walking to the trash to throw away the bottle cap, and it's been a long day, okay? Like, 12 hour day. And I was a little too eager to get that beer in my belly and walk at the same time and...and I think I took a little bit of that post-hookah/mint experience filling off of my tooth. I'm too scared to look.

Damn you, Brad. Did I mention that now he's an middle school English teacher and mushes? Dogs. Mushes dogs.