Regretful Choices: My Experience with Pipe Smoking

I’d never have smoked the pipe.

I can offer you countless reasons I smoked it. One of them was that it made me look cool. You smoke a pipe, and automatically, you’re smart. And girls thought it made you look studly (whatever that means).

Or so I thought.

I didn’t stop and think about what might happen years down the line. While I had a pipe gripped in place with my teeth, it was weaking several teeth. The teeth bent backwards and loosened. I realized that one day when one tooth felt odd and I realized I could move it a little.

That didn’t stop me. I continued smoking it until four teeth moved.

Now, there’s something Sherlock Holmes never complained about.

I quit when I went into the Army, but the damage was done.

Still, I kept those teeth.

And they got looser, and looser until one day my dentist told me there was very little keeping them in. One had even moved out and away from the gum.

He ended up having to pull them.

Today, I wear a partial.

So, if I could change one thing, I’d never have picked up the pipe.

Maybe I’d still have those teeth.