Day 21: Magic Teeth

Usually you show up for your last day of work, right? Usually....

Quinn didn't. In the morning he was nowhere to be found. In the afternoon he was nowhere to be found. Not even when the checks came at lunch, did he show his face. I was kinda disappointed that he didn't come to work. It was pretty laid back today too...I mean, as laid back as it could get with all the Arizona employees ducking out at lunchtime to drive home for the weekend. We probably lost half our crew during lunch.

The whole morning Alfredo, Luis, Arturo, Geneva, and I hung measuring tape and leveled the new section of the FAB that we had just hung grids on. My neck already was hurting, but I had to spend the first 6 hours of my day looking up at the stupid ceiling. Alfredo tried to teach Geneva the commands in spanish, for what he was saying (un-octavo, etc.), but she ended up just saying "un-ocho" and we all laughed about it. Then Alfredo said "Yes Sir Dawg," and we all laughed about it.

At lunch, Brad and I ate alone, as Griffin and Skye were at lunch with Alex's crew. They had a pizza party. Now every Friday different crews will switch off with pizza parties; Brycon's paying! I'm excited for ours....at least, I hope it comes before we quit. That would suck.

After lunch, Gerard pooled the remaining contractors and we worked on wiz nutting and drilling holes in the I-beams for the rest of the day. I worked with Jaime up on the scaffold, doing wiz nuts, while Brad and Daniel drilled the holes. Geneva, Derek, and a few other people pushed us around and the afternoon went really slow.

Until suddenly Jaime noticed everyone congregating around Brad and Daniel's scaffold. Jaime said, "Is your friend alright?" and I saw from between the grids, Brad walking away, accompanied by a couple people. He was shaking his hand, so I assumed that he had probably cut himself or something. Not a big problem... Ron walked up to the scaffold we were on and said "Your buddy just knocked his teeth out."

"Yeah right, Ron. No really, what happened?" I said. He replied, "No really, he knocked one of his teeth out."

Wow........that can't be. But it was true. He was rushed to the dentist, but not before putting the tooth in milk to save it, and enduring a drug screening to prove he wasn't high. What had happened was, Brad was using a wrench to tighted one of the bolts on the hardware for the ceiling. On the very last tug he gave on the nut, to ensure it was tight, his wrench slipped and slammed straight into his left canine tooth. He fell backwards and his tooth luckily landed on the scaffolding next to him. He looked at it and thought, "Is that my tooth? Yeah, that's my tooth.....crap!" When he went in to fill out the accident report, they asked him not to use any of the words he used during the accident, while filling it out. Brad thought to himself, "What words? Crap?" Gerard actually used them all for Brad. He was in shock that Brad wasn't crying or screaming out in pain. Brad didn't feel a thing. Gerard (who usually has a really clean mouth) was like, "Holy S***! I can't believe you aren't crying. That would hurt so F****** bad! I'd be screaming so bad...." He obviously swore more than that, but I needn't go on.

Interestingly enough, the entire tooth, roots and all had popped right out of his head. The really creepy thing was that it wasn't scratched, chipped or broken in any way, and Brad really never felt a thing. It didn't really hurt at all. In fact, he was humming and singing to himself on the way down to the nurse's office. The nurse thought it was his escort that was sick, cause Brad looked so lively until he smiled. They were able to save the tooth and stick it back in. It's there to this day, losing color as it slowly dies (the dentist said it would probably die and we'd just paint it to look better). The dentist said to Brad, in between numerous comments on his beautifully straight teeth, "I've never seen anything like this before, and I've been a dentist for a while. I can't believe it came out all in one peice! No chips or scratches or anything. You said your prayers this morning, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir, I did" Brad replied, frankly.

Brad tells the story better than I do, and the best part is that his tooth is perfectly fine, while he has this totally awesome story to tell. He was fine afterward, happy and ready to go on our double date we had planned for this evening (which was great). Too bad Quinn never showed up to see the magic tooth.


Quote of the Day:

*Ping!* (sound of Jaime's hard hat hitting the steel sprinkler line)

"Woah...good thing I was wearing my hard hat!"
-Jaime