Like everyone else, I've dreamt of losing my teeth, though not anywhere near as horrifying as Charlie just pulling his teeth out quizzically in It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I at least feel justified in worrying about my teeth just falling out because I have terrible teeth. I have managed to salvage most of mine (I have only had to have one pulled) which is so incredibly fortunate since I'm pretty sure I didn't see a dentist before I was twenty-two years old. (My mother had other priorities.)
It's hard to find data about people dreaming of losing their teeth but it's not hard to find out what that's supposed to mean. Humans really need to have their dreams mean something, which is part & parcel of the hubris of our species, & the web insists that losing teeth means either "embarrassment" or "losing faith." Not only are those two things completely unrelated, I should think it's not at all embarrassing to "lose faith."
(The Devil's Dictionary defines faith as "belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.")
It's far more easy to find figures about how many people no longer have teeth, & it's a little frightening: one quarter of adults in the United States over the age of 65 have lost all their teeth. That's more terrifying to me than dreams of teeth falling out or, worse, being loose in my mouth, because it seems far more likely to happen to me. Two decades is a long time to neglect one's teeth.
Luckily I am not a patient at the hella sarcastic Doon South Dental in Kitchener, Ontario, which has this hilarious article entitled How To Get Rid Of Your Teeth on their website. It's a scream.
I won't sleep well tonight.
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