Gaby Navarro

ENC 1101

Professor Vickers

10/7/20

Broken Smile

“It’s going to be ok, everything is fixable,” is the only thing my mom said that I could hear over

the sound of my heartbeat pounding inside of my head. I felt disoriented, could not see clearly, and

distant sounds of my mom talking were muffled. I could not get myself to calm down and get back to

reality. I was looking around not noticing what was going on so I started making sure my arms were

intact, feeling my face, and then it led me to my mouth where all I could feel is more than half of my

front tooth missing.

So, let me explain... I was in the middle of third grade when my whole life changed. I am from

Miami, FL where it is hot all year round. Occasionally during December, we get a day where the

temperature drops to about 70 degrees. When this usually happens my family and I go on bike rides

around my neighborhood. We were very avid bike riders since the minute I learned to ride a bike. So, on

this crisp morning we rode bike to the park, went down to the dock at Deering Estate, and ended our

bike ride with a snack at Starbucks right across the street from our house. This was our usual route for

our weekend bike rides. On this day nothing had been out of the ordinary about our ride. Until the last

stretch on the road to get home. This was where my life was suddenly changed, I lost control of my bike

and fell off it.

Now although a lot of people fall off their bikes my case was a little different. I decided not to let

go of my bike handles. Where anyone else would have stuck their arms out to prevent their fall I did not.
So instead of scraping my arms I fell face first on the asphalt and ended up scraping my face. I can’t

really remember anything else from this moment but I do remember that after I realized it was my tooth

that had been broken I immediately started looking for the other piece to put under my pillow for the

tooth fairy.

Since I was only nine years old “It’s going to be ok, everything is fixable,” that my mom kept

saying were not helping me calm down at all. After about 10 minutes of crying, I had to be a champ and

pick up my bike and walk home. Once we were home my mom immediately grabbed the phone and

called my dentist. As she was doing this I went to my bathroom and looked in the mirror and all I could

see is blood. There was dark red blood all over my teeth and it was oozing out of my lip. I could not stop

thinking that my smile would never be the same again.

When I started to clean out my mouth from the blood, I saw my tooth was gone and my lip had

a huge gash in it. This caused me to begin to cry uncontrollably. Here is to my luck that of course, this

had to happen on a Sunday. The only day the dentist is closed, so my mom pulled some strings to get

the dentist to come in to fix my tooth. Here I was thinking I would end up being that girl with a missing

tooth. Wondering how was I ever going to smile again?

Fast forward ten years my lip is healed, my tooth is fixed, and my life is filled with smiles. No one

really knows about my fake tooth unless I tell them about it which is cool. This has still come with some

setbacks. I will never be able to bite into an apple ever again, I must be extremely careful I do not hit my

tooth while playing sports, and it has fallen off once a few years back. I was able to get it fixed again and

it is good as new. I do still have one problem; I have not and will not ever get on a bike again. You would

think I would get over my fear and ride a bike again especially since I’m already 19 years old, but “no

thank you,” is all I tell people when they ask me to go on a bike ride. Still to this day no matter how

much my family has tried they still have not offered me enough money to get back on a bike.