Woody’s award-winning novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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I hope you have a wonderful dentist who not only keeps your smile healthy and radiant, but also puts a grin on your face each visit.

However, if you try to tell me that your dentist is better than my D.D.S., I am afraid I will have to have to knock out one of your front teeth.

Speaking of missing teeth, when I was in Scotland a handful of years ago, I was strolling along a plaza walkway when a woman tripped me from behind sending me airborne headfirst down four stairs whereupon I landed sprawled prone on a cement patio area. Miraculously, I sufferer neither a broken arm or fractured hip nor a concussion.

But my smile of lucky relief had two broken top middle front teeth.

The trip-and-run woman quickly fled the scene, but another lady came to my aid and with kind intentions handed me a pair of cufflinks-sized nuggets of teeth – I’m not sure if she expected me Gorilla Glue them back in place or keep them as souvenirs of my trip, pun intended, to The Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.

For the remaining week of travel that headed next through Ireland, I felt self-consciousness about opening my mouth in conversations and remained tight-lipped for photographs. So you can imagine my great gratitude when my dentist, Doc Stacy, shoehorned me into his schedule the very morning after the night I flew home. By noon, I was smiling widely again with temporary crowns and a week later had two new perfect porcelain incisors.

Doc Stacy has been my dentist for nearly half my life, better than three decades, and over that time he has given me a million-dollar smile – or, at least, six-figure pearly whites. He has given me more crowns than in marathon game of checkers; crafted a few veneers; encouraged me to get braces as an adult; and, most recently, assisted with a dental implant – specifically, tooth No. 14, the upper left permanent maxillary first molar.

By the way, what do you think a snack-sized bag of “Roasted & Sea Salted” whole almonds costs? Whatever you guessed, multiply it by about a thousand, because even with dental insurance that is how much my resulting nut-cracked tooth set me back.

The worst part of getting a shiny new chomper was having the old bad apple plucked out. Dr. Z, whose name I cannot pronounce, much less spell, is the oral surgeon who did the plucking and implanting of a titanium post.

I wanted local anesthesia rather than sedation, but Dr. Z zealously urged me to concede as well to a smidgen of intravenous magic potion to “take the edge off.” Leery he might not stop until my twilight zone became midnight, I nonetheless agreed.

I need not have worried. Dr. Z was true to his word. Right before administering the agreed-upon small dose through an IV in my forearm, he said: “You’ll feel this pretty quickly.” No sooner had “quickly” escaped his lips than I felt like I had quaffed three pints of Double IPA.

“Can I have a little more?” I asked Dr. Z, as if he were a bartender, and he happily served me a chaser that left me still awake and feeling wonnnnderrrrful.

Also wonderful was that for the next few days I had a valid excuse to eat nothing but chocolate milkshakes!

After a few months, after the implant fused fully in the jawbone, Doc Stacy added a Zirconia tooth. I can again eat anything I want – but I still pass on the almonds.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.