Toothless

Eileen pounded her fist against the bathroom countertop, making all the little amber pill bottles jump in surprise. "BLAST!" she muttered fiercely. It was the inconvenience on top of humiliation, that's what made it so damn aggravating. Age. It absolutely killed you until …well… it killed you.

She glared at the counter again through a different level on her trifocals. There was the collection of pill bottles, the denture paste and the kleenex and the tall can of aquanet. What was NOT there were her teeth. She had to get her drivers license renewed in half an hour and she’d be damned if she’d be a toothless little old lady in her picture.

However, seeing no other option, she knotted a blue scarf over her white hair, set and curled, and was locking the back door on her way out when she saw something small and white on the pavement where her great-grandkids had been playing the evening before. With further inconvenience and humiliation, Eileen bent over enough to pick it up, and even managed to straighten back up to inspect the thing.

They were pointy. They were plastic. They had been sitting on the filthy ground all night and half the morning.

They were better than no teeth.