I came home around two p.m. from High School.  I unlocked the door and came in with an armful of books.  There were no school backpacks in Paleolithic times.  I saw my dad laying on the couch with his arm over his mouth.

“Why are you home so early?” I asked.  “Are you sick?”

He mumbled through his arm, “MMMMFFF”  I dropped my books to the floor, worried.  Well, he told me.  His upper denture had broken in half when he bit into his sandwich at lunch.  He had lunch duty in a classroom.  He walked out, gagging, with the sandwich still in his mouth.  On his way home he dropped by his dentist’s office and left the denture there to be mended.

I knew how it happened.  Many mornings I heard the clatter of the denture into the sink and his mumbled swearing.  When he got the denture back the dentist told him to fill the sink with water whenever he was brushing them and his bottom teeth.

We never talked about it.  But, the kids in his lunch duty wondered why he walked out of that classroom with a sandwich clenched in his mouth. They talked about it.