5 - A Reasonable Explanation of the Flying Dentures

Today was the anniversary of his grandfather’s death. It was only one minute past midnight. And as always, he waited with a battered, badly worn set of dentures in his hand, as if he were waiting until exactly midnight to send a birthday message.

When midnight passed, he stood up, raised the dentures he was holding into the air, and nodded in greeting.

‘’Yes, Grandpa. Now I’m a Grandpa. Note this. That’s a rational connection.’’

When he was a child, he found it strange that when you moved an object that had been sitting in the same place for a long time, the area underneath it was perfectly clean. When their refrigerator, whose bottom they hadn’t cleaned in years, broke down and they lifted it to give it to a scrap dealer, he had never expected to find a perfectly white square on the linoleum underneath. Something that can be explained by simple logic, but still catches you completely off guard.

The foundations of his interest in drawing were probably laid when he first saw the underside of this refrigerator. A few weeks later, he had to spend some time in a very dirty house because of an unimportant story whose details are irrelevant, and when he moved a large, round, ceramic ashtray, the perfect, spotless circle underneath it strengthened his growing inclination to become a painter even further.

The ashtray was sitting on a table covered with a burgundy cloth. It was a more beautiful color than the one he had seen under the refrigerator. The area under the refrigerator was plain white. He liked the square shape and was impressed by how clean it was, but there, cleanliness stood out more than color. But on the table, color took center stage; amid all that accumulated dust, the burgundy shone like a jewel.

As he gazed in admiration at the burgundy circle, his grandfather suddenly called out from the doorway: “Jason!”

Jason turned to his grandfather with a deep sense of annoyance. He frowned, looking at him with the kind of irritation a child might feel when he is forced to go to bed just as he is about to finish a game with a high score.

“Come on, we’re leaving.”

He was even more annoyed now. His grandfather had already gotten between him and the circle, and now he was trying to pull him away from it too.

“Can I take this circle home with me?”

The old man came over to Jason and approached the table.

“Which circle?”

“This one.”

His grandfather waited for a few seconds. He seemed to be trying to hold himself back.

“Which one? Say it again.”

“This one, Grandpa. Can’t you see it?”

That was when his grandfather burst out laughing. And with the very first breath of his laughter, his dentures flew out of his mouth and landed on the table, right in the middle of the burgundy circle. The old man stopped laughing and immediately lunged for the dentures. He looked embarrassed.

“Nice placement, huh?”

He put the dentures back in his mouth. Then he took a pen and paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and wrote something down.

“Now, just so there’s no misunderstanding. I don’t want you telling people about this when you’re older, when you’re in your thirties. I don’t want you going around saying, ‘For quite a while, I thought my teeth were going to fly out of my mouth whenever I laughed.’ No, nothing like that. You’re a child, you know. You can’t properly connect events with their consequences yet. You’re not going to go and ask your mother and father why your grandfather’s teeth flew out of his mouth either. You’re an introverted child like that. You don’t investigate things you don’t understand. You try to figure them out on your own. But you should ask your mother and father. You should make them explain things to you. You need to start learning things little by little. Take this circle, for example. Go on, take it. Let’s see if you can take the circle with you.”

While his grandfather was talking, Jason’s eyes were drawn to the cat wandering around the room. His grandfather, who was getting ready to leave, had left the door open. The cat was quietly wandering around inside. Jason didn’t mention it because he didn’t want to interrupt the old man or make it seem like he wasn’t paying attention to him.

Now Jason was looking at the burgundy circle. He tried to figure it out. He could feel himself growing nervous with his grandfather standing over him. Under normal circumstances, he knew he could take the circle with him, but with his grandfather watching him, he couldn’t even begin to think of a way to do it.

“See? You can’t take the circle with you. Now, people’s teeth don’t fly out of their mouths. Mine are dentures. Yours are perfectly fine. Unless you have a set of teeth that you can take out of your mouth and put back in, your teeth aren’t going to fly out of your mouth, whether you laugh, scream, or do anything else.”

Grandpa was still holding the pen and paper. He wrote something else on the paper and asked in a distracted tone, “Do you understand?”

“What are you writing in the notebook? You were writing something in it the other day too.”

“I’m writing down the things I’ve corrected because you might misunderstand them.”

“Can I see it?”

The old man handed the notebook to Jason. It read:

..It was explained that people cannot jump very long distances forward. - understood.

..It was explained in detail that doors do not close on their own, with a physical demonstration. - did not understand.

..It was explained that a very large object can be very light, depending on what it is made of. - did not understand.

..It was explained that when a wall clock stops working, time continues to pass. -understood.

The list went on for several more pages. At the very end, the following notes had been added that day:

..It was explained that the circle cannot be picked up and taken away. - did not understand.

..It was explained that people’s teeth cannot fly out of their mouths when they laugh. - understood.

“You can’t read or write, and yet you want to know what’s written in the notebook, for example. You should be able to figure these things out by now.”

“Can I take this cat with me, then?”

“Which cat?”

Jason bent down and picked up the white cat rubbing against his legs. He thought about taking it home and dyeing its fur burgundy.

“We can’t take it.”

“Why not?”

“We can’t just take everything we see and carry it away. There are all sorts of rules and variables involved in taking something with you. I’ll explain it to you later. You’ve worn me out, Jason.”

The cat suddenly started squirming in Jason’s arms and then, with one long scratch across Jason’s chest, jumped onto the table. Took a couple of confused steps on the table and then froze, staring at grandfather. The few steps it had taken left marks in the layer of dust.

Jason’s sympathy for the cat, which was now creating new burgundy patches on the table, grew stronger. He lunged toward it, trying to pick it up again. But the cat suddenly sprinted across the table.

It ran straight toward the wall, then immediately turned around and came running back toward Jason. But Jason was standing there with his arms open, ready to catch it. The cat changed direction and ran toward an open space on the table where it could jump off, accidentally pushing the ashtray with its hind paws as it ran. As the cat kept maneuvering across the dusty table, the blows from its paws sent dust flying into the air throughout the room.

In all that cloud of dust, everything happened very quickly. The ashtray landed on his grandfather’s foot. His grandfather cried out, “Ah!” and his dentures flew out of his mouth again. As he tried to catch his dentures in midair, his foot slipped, and he fell hard, hitting his head on the floor.

Now, at sixty-nine, Jason still remembered that deep, resonant sound. A sound that felt completely full. A pure, raw sound. With a timbre that could never be imitated.

Jason didn’t know what to do. His grandfather wasn’t moving, the cat had run away, and the dentures had landed at the foot of one of the table legs.

“These dentures must be cursed,” he said to himself. “They never stay where they’re supposed to. They’re always getting my grandfather into trouble.”

He threw the dentures out the window with all his strength.

“Could you at least have turned me onto my back, son? You just left me lying there where I fell without even moving me?”

“I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“Sorry Grandpa.”

“Oh, God. There are so many disconnected things to explain now. We’re screwed.”

The old man checked his head with his hand. There was no bleeding, just a little swelling.

“How long have I been lying here?”

“I don’t know. It hasn’t been that long, though.”

“Where are my dentures?”

“I threw them away. They’re cursed. They’re no good for you.”

“Yes, bravo. Another misunderstanding.”

There was silence again, and in that silence, the sound of his grandfather’s head hitting the floor came back to Jason. He flinched. He was very glad he had thrown the dentures out the window.

“Anyway, let’s go to a hospital now. We’ll look for the dentures later, but if you threw them really hard, they might have hit something and been damaged. Yeah, anyway. We’ll just have a new set made. You need to learn, Jason. You should be able to understand cause and effect by now. You’re old enough. You’re six years old. You need to start working on understanding situations correctly, little by little. Now, I’m going to the hospital. I can go by myself. You find those dentures and bring them to me.”