It was near enough two weeks ago when it all began. The hour was getting late and Sebastian had been preparing himself to settle down for the night. The television was not showing his current fad of desiccated movies from yesteryear. Nothing like the old westerns he sometimes watched either on the Lone Star Channel -- Wells Fargo, Wanted Dead or Alive, or The Rifleman. This was one of a series of impossible action movies created to tantalise a new generation of over indulged youth.

Sebastian was comfortable in his big rocking chair as the fireplace struggled to ward off the grip of winter’s chill.

“Never go to bed on an empty stomach, son,” his old dad used to say.

He paused a moment as he remembered that now, then shambled off to his kitchen to prepared a couple of slices of toasted Low Fat Mountain Grain bread, lightly spread with 100% natural creamy peanut butter hidden under a thin coating of Peach Jam, with a steaming mug of Ovaltine to wash it all down. Sleep usually whisked him away before he finished his late night snack only to desert him later in the night when he would get up and take himself off to bed.

This night, as he settled himself down in his chair again, bullets were flying all over the TV screen. He thought he would be safe even though Clint Eastwood, or was it Bruce Willis, or maybe it was that Arnold chap now governor of California, blasted all hell out of thin air.

He watched a moment aghast at the action on the screen then sighed and began to eat his toast.

“At least in the old days,” he said aloud to the movie actors making so much noise, “a single shot from a carefully aimed six-shooter killed a baddie and no windows got broken or glass chips made escape on foot a painful affair. Huh, you bunch of trigger ticklers spend a fortune trying to make hamburger out of a threat to America’s way of life.”

Sebastian crunched on a slice of his peanut butter and jam when suddenly something harder than the toast crust hit his teeth.

“What the hell . . . I’ve been shot!” He dropped his toast, and clasped his face.

The bullets stopped flying. The scene changed. Sebastian carefully stuck a finger in his mouth to assess the damage; to find out what had caused the pain in his jaw. A chunk was broken off a back tooth.

“Damn!” he said when he fished it out.

He was a shaken man but settled himself down and decided not to bother getting it fixed just yet. All that the dentist would do was want to pull it out. A quick and easy fix for something he had cared about for close on eighty years.

“I’ll let it start to rot first, which it probably would do, and not get rid of it until it hurts too much,” he muttered as he wrestled himself to sleep.



“Flax seed is a good source of Omega 3," the nurse told him at the seniors fitness class a few days later.

He went looking them and found some in the little grocery store down the road: crunchy flaxseed cookies with no sugar or trans fat either.

It was now Friday night, just over a week after the stray bullet broke his tooth, that a flax seed caught between his front teeth. He fumbled to dig it out with a tooth pick but a whole filling came out as well. Half a tooth missing at the back was one thing but a gaping hole in the upper centre front teeth was totally another story.

“Imagine your boyfriend sticking his tongue in that!” He chuckled.

Saturday morning Sebastian phoned the office of his dentist, Dr. Perkins, to book an appointment. The best time he could get was just after the lunch hour the following Thursday.

It was Tuesday morning and he as all snuggled up, warm, and in dreamland when the phone nudged him awake. Despite his bleary eyes, even without the aid of his glasses, Sebastian saw that it was only eight minutes past nine - the crack of dawn!

“This is Dr. Perkins’ office. We have a cancellation at 10:30. Do you want it?” a sweet voice whispered in his ear.

The tip of his tongue felt sore from probing during the night, the space vacated by the filling.

“Damn right love.”

Dr. Perkins had moved his business a few months earlier to a new shopping mall just off the freeway leading north across the river on the city’s west side. It was an easy bus ride and Sebastian arrived a full five minutes early, had his picture taken four times, and was dozing off to sleep when the good doctor came in. He fussed around a bit and looked at the X-ray images.

“No needles, just a couple of fillings, that’s easy.” Dr. Perkins said. “Open please.”

He thrust a mirror into Sebastian’s mouth, his head under Sebastian’s nose and set about doing what he loved to do best in life.

At 11:30 on the dot, Sebastian left the dentist’s office, both teeth repaired and his wallet three hundred something dollars lighter, but he was happy. It had been four years since he last sat in that dentist chair.

“Thank you,” he said. “See you in another four years.”

He headed for the bus stop waiving to the driver to hold up a minute. The bus wasn’t crowded and shortly after he settled into a seat, Sebastian was asleep again.

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