Strange things always happen in run down, greasy spoon diners. This day was no exception. I had spent several months working with Tom in Minnesota and grew to appreciate his strange sensibilities. He was a character and those around him just didn’t understand him. He was gruff, seemingly angry all the time. But that was purely his exterior. He respected straight talk and despised those that beat around the bush. If you came at him honestly and with integrity, he thought the world of you and had a profound amount of respect for you. So it was the case with Tom and me. I understood Tom and I knew how to deal with him and the way that he saw things. It worked extremely well for our two companies and it is why I was always chosen to work with him. Being that Tom’s company was such an important account for our company and Tom being the project leader - basically what Tom wanted, Tom got. Tom only trusted me to work with the equipment our company was putting into his project. This ultimately lead to me spending longs stints in Minnesota.
Tom rarely, if ever, ate lunch. He normally spent his lunch hour chain smoking cigarettes, eating Ritz crackers and gnawing my ear off with stories he must have told me a hundred times over. But this day was different. Tom was actually hungry for some real food and wanted to walk over to local diner that was just up the road from the factory. We walked there in the blustery cold. It was late October and the day was really cloudy. It looked like it was going to rain. I remember I wanted to go and get my jacket, but Tom insisted that it was just up the street and not that far. But hell, “I live in California, man!” I thought, but braved the walk anyway, though it was not without some hesitation. I knew where the diner was in relation to the factory. My hotel wasn’t far from the diner and the town really wasn’t all that big to begin with. In fact, “all that big”, meant everyone in the town knew who I was, where I was from and why I was there. So I knew how far we were going and I knew I was going to freeze my ass off on the walk to the diner. But I figured if Tom could do it, I’d man up and do it also. So I rushed off to catch up with him.
We entered the diner and I was greeted warmly because I had become a regular, being that I had eaten there day in and day out for months. Tom seemed somewhat impressed by this, though I am not exactly sure why. We were shown to our table and started to peruse the menu. Here is where Tom was at the pique of his funniest. I got treated to nearly a thousand ways you can eat Walleye. He just wouldn’t stop and went on and on about this fish that I surely wasn’t going to order. Then, out of the blue, when I think he is going to get the Walleye, he says, “This damn roast beef sandwich looks pretty good! I think I’ll get it!” and snaps his fingers to call over the waitress. I started visibly laughing at this absurd situation. It was just too much to contain. I mean, he had been talking about this damn fish for what seemed like ten minutes and he wasn’t even going to order it? Then he snaps his fingers for the waitress to come over like he is some Roman Caesar? Too awesome! But that was Tom in a nutshell and it was why I loved every second of being with him.
Now, before we continue with this story, there is one additional detail that you need to know about Tom. It is probably the most important detail as it is what will bring this story together. Tom wasn’t too concerned with brushing his teeth. Well, to be fair, I don’t really know this for a fact. I never really asked him if he brushed his teeth or not. But one can surmise from the color and the ability for certain teeth to float about the gums that another person doesn’t really consider good dental hygiene a priority. He also used to complain that he had to “eventually get to a dentist”, which baffled me. I considered it to be a bit late for that. I was always of the opinion that he should just yank them all out and start over. But hey… that’s me. Either way, Tom’s dental condition was hard to ignore. He was always pushing his loose upper, front tooth back the forth with his tongue when he was deep in thought. It was distracting when you were trying to think along with him and there he was pushing that tooth back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. How in the hell do you ignore that and get to the root of the problem at hand? All I could think about about is running screaming to the restroom, toothbrush in tow and scrubbing the shit out of teeth so ‘that’ doesn’t happen to me. Other times, I just wanted to reach over and yank that damn tooth out. But most of the time, I felt sorry for Tom and wondered where his life must have gone wrong to let his teeth get like that? He obviously acknowledged the problem, but did nothing to fix it. I found it a little sad because I had so much respect for the guy.
Our food had come rather quickly. That little, greasy spoon always had good service. The food was awful, but the food always came quickly and the waitresses were consistently nice. I forgot what I had ordered, but the waitress put the biggest roast beef sandwich on white bread and a huge plate of fries in front of Tom. His eyes grew wide and he looked a bit excited when he saw his food. “Don’t that look good, Dave?” he said with a wide, yuck-mouth grin. I smiled as he picked up a half of his sandwich and went to take a huge bite. Now… here is where time began to creep in slow motion and I don’t recall why I was actually watching Tom at this moment. Perhaps I was enjoying the fact that my friend was excited over his meal and wanted to see him take his first bite. Or perhaps I half expected the events of the next few second to unfold the way that they did. But when Tom bit down into that sandwich, all but one tooth, that one damn tooth I have been wanting to pull out, penetrated the sandwich. The situation wouldn’t have been that bad if it would have just stopped there; however, it didn’t just cease at that moment. As the tooth bent around and touched his upper lip, it gave way, popped out and fell onto the top of the bread. This was immediately followed by a massive stream of blood from the massive hole where said tooth used to be. And the blood flowed all over the sandwich, his hands and onto the plate.
Tom dropped his sandwich on the plate and grabbed a handful of napkins in the attempt to put some pressure on the huge, gaping hole that is now in his mouth. I just sat there stunned; my mouth agape. As each bundle of napkins would fill up with blood, Tom would drop them on the table and grab more and press them up against his mouth. At some point during this fiasco, he felt it prudent to run into the restroom, leaving me alone at the bloodied table. The waitress, I guess feeling comfortable enough now that Tom had left, came up slowly and looked at the mess. I turned to look at her and she asked me if everything was alright. I just nodded and she walked away as if not wanting anything to do with that scene. I couldn’t blame her.
I sat there for a few minutes soaking in the situation. There I was, sitting at a bloody table with a bloody roast beef sandwich and a single brown tooth resting right there on top of it. There was blood all over the plate and bloody napkins off to the right side it. I mean, what the fuck just happened? Is this really happening? I looked around the restaurant mostly to see if our table had become the center of attention. But surprisingly, it wasn’t. Everyone was causally going about their business as if all of this wasn’t really happening. I looked back. My hands were gripping the edge of the table almost as if I were hoping to maintain some connection to reality. But it was still there. The bloody roast beef sandwich with the brown tooth sitting on top. Oh shit! This is really happening. Awesome! I started to laugh. And I mean laugh. Hysterically. I couldn’t contain it. Something bubbled up inside of me that just snapped and released and as much as I tried to stop it, I couldn’t. I just sat there and laughed my ass off at that damn tooth.
About fifteen minutes later, Tom returned. The bleeding had stopped and, thankfully, so had my laughter. He sat down and looked at me. Then, without missing a beat, he picked up the sandwich, said, “God damn! This roast beef is tough today!” and took a bite. He then, to my amazement, sat there and ate the whole damn sandwich, blood and all. At some point, I remember telling him that they would probably make him a new sandwich. He just waved off the idea. “Nah!” he exclaimed as if too proud to admit what had just happened. I paid the tab and went back to work and we never spoke of the tooth incident. But, he did return a few days later grinning with a shiny, new, white tooth that looked so damn out of place among all those other brown teeth. But that was Tom. You had love him.
