Jim Dalrymple.com

As if Michael’s teeth problems weren’t enough this past week, Nicole went in today to get braces on her teeth. She was actually looking forward to having braces — Monique and I both had them and neither of us looked forward to having them.

The braces were planned for quite a while now, but it just adds to the drama as we prepare to take Michael in for the first of his five root canals on Thursday. I think they’ll take a week or so to complete them.

Nicole didn’t think the braces would hurt, but after only an hour or so she said the bottom teeth are starting to hurt. From experience I told her they will hurt a lot more in the next few days.

I talked to my parents last night and told them all about Michael’s accident. Then we talked about how freaky my accident was compared to what Michael went through yesterday — the similarities are kind of incredible.

When I was 11 or 12, I had a similar accident to Michael. Most people don’t know, but I have a false tooth in the front — it came out through my lip when I crashed. For many years I had a mustache, which hid the scar, but over the past few years the scar has almost disappeared.

Here are a few of the similarities:

Jim: Riding down a hill a few hours before my soccer game and lost control of my bike.

Michael: Riding down a hill a few hours before his soccer game and lost control of his bike.

Jim: Went over my handlebars and knocked out my front tooth.

Michael: Went over (or sideways, we don’t really know) his handlebars and knocked out the same front tooth.

Jim: Two strangers (a young man and woman) stopped and took me home.

Michael: Two strangers (a young man and woman) stopped and took him home.

Jim: When I got home, my father said I just stood in the driveway bleeding. When I approached him, I stuck my finger through my lip where the tooth came out. I don’t remember most of that.

Michael: He got out of the car and just stared at us bleeding, not really knowing what to do.

Jim: My parents got the tooth (I’m not sure if they went back or if the people that brought me home picked it up).

Michael: I went back to the accident scene and picked up the tooth off the road.

Jim: My parents took me to see Dr. Christie to have my tooth put back in my mouth. We then went to the hospital.

Michael: We took Michael to see Dr. Christie (yep same guy) and he sent us to the hospital.

The next day, Michael and I both looked about the same. I feel so bad for him.

I seriously thought my heart was going to break as I watched my 10-year-old son lying in the hospital, covered in blood. earlier today Michael was driving down a steep hill on his bike and lost control. Besides the fact he lost nine teeth, we know very little about what happened.

Mike left the house with his friend to spend the afternoon bike riding — the last thing Monique said was “don’t race down the hills.” A few minutes later she walked into the family room and said “I hope he listens to me about going down the hills too fast — I would hate for him to crash and knock out some teeth.”

She turned around, walked to the front door as a strange car drove up and stopped in front of our driveway. The passenger’s door opened and a young woman got out with Michael, completely covered in blood. Monique screamed and I ran to the door.

After we made sure he had no broken bones, I hopped in the truck and went to the accident scene to recover the missing tooth. It was still in the middle of the road where it landed. I grabbed it drove home, picked everyone up and went to our dentists office. He quickly told us to go to the IWK Childrens Hospital.

They took care of us pretty quickly at the hospital. First they had a doctor check him out, both physically and mentally — until then Michael had no idea where he was or what happened to him. He checked out okay, although they were a bit concerned about him.

When the dental sergeon came, he didn’t have good news. He said they could not put in the front tooth that got knocked out. In addition to that, they had to pull three other teeth because they were so loose. To make matters worse five other teeth had to be wired in place or he would lose those too.

Even though those teeth are now wired in place, Michael will have to go through five root canals in order to save them. The doctor said those teeth are already dead.

Michael spent two or three hours in surgery this afternoon. We left for the hospital at 1:30 pm and arrived home at 8:30 pm.

At least he is alive and has all his limbs, eyes and was wearing a helmet or it could have been much worse.

Michael actually started Soccer season on Tuesday, but I was in Cleveland so I didn’t get to see the first match. No big deal really, the first night they get their jerseys and meet the coach and stuff like that.

Tonight was their first real game. They played really well, but ended up losing 2-1 – a heartbreaker considering they had two breakaways in the second half and missed. One was saved by the goalie and one went wide.

The first match the coach is figuring out who plays what position and so on, so perhaps they’ll win next time.

Michael and I are going to start working for a half an hour or so every night on some soccer skills. It should be fun, I have a lot I can teach him and we’ll get to spend some time together.

I will go to great lengths to avoid the fights associated with driving with my kids. In my last vehicle I purchased the package that included a DVD player in the back, so the kids would be occupied. Complete with wireless headphones, the DVD player works well, but always having a new DVD on hand isn’t as easy as it sounds.

At 11 and nine my kids — like most others — have an uncanny ability to know just how long a trip is, giving them time to drag out the torture of fights and bickering until the very end. If we leave for a five minute drive to the mall, they will start fighting as soon as we get in the car, making sure we don’t miss a minute of arguements. If we go on a longer drive, they seem to get along, lulling us into a feeling of peacful bliss and then POW! the fights begin.

The latest thing my wife and I gave up are our iPods. Although we know the peacefulness won’t last forever, the last drive we went on was great — we never really heard from them and we didn’t have the constant, “what did you say,” while we were trying to have a conversation without the kids’ involvement.

When we pulled into McDonald’s on the way home, I noticed both kids bopping their heads to the music and staring intently at the iPod screens. When I looked closer, my daughter was playing Solitaire and my son was playing Parachute. What’s even stranger about this is that they both have new GameBoys — couldn’t they listen to music on the iPod and play their GameBoys?

The anwser — which I will never understand — is no. My daughter explained it to me, and while it seemed to make perfect sensse to them, the logic went right over my head. Suffice it to say, they really liked the combination of the iPod music and the games included in the device.

I think it was just another way for them to mess with my mind.