….the
Nash Metropolitan figures prominently in my own life.
On
that same summer day in 1956, when I was twelve, that just hours before, I watched Jerry Lewis repeatedly slap the head of
his son Gary (years later, of "Gary and the Playboys" fame) for taking pictures on my little Brownie Holiday of me running
the bases at his house but forgetting to advance the film, my older brother, on his bike, followed me, on mine, down Monaco
Drive, and just as the road skims Sunset Boulevard and turns into San Remo Drive, I looked over to Sunset on my right and
shouted to my brother, "Look! A yellow Metropolitan!" I shouldn't have. Had I
not, I would have noticed a car coming directly at me. Just as it slammed on
its brakes, my face slammed on its hood, chopping my two front teeth roughly in half, and launching me (according to onlookers)
about twenty-five feet through the air.
The
two college girls in the car placed my forever-after mangled bike in the trunk, and drove my bruised and embarrassed little
body to my home three blocks away.
Days
later, I went back to the scene to search for the remains of my teeth, on the odd chance that some dentist might find them
useful in the reconstruction of my bite, but found only tiny granite pebbles sitting in little patches of blood in the street.
Up
until the moment of impact, I had my mother's perfect teeth, without a cavity or a chip.
After it, my mouth took a dive, first through a Bazooka bubblegum addiction that gave me my first 13 fillings (all
in just one dentist's visit, by the way), to the point that today, my two kids often like to stare inside to see if they can
see their cute little reflections in my gold crowns.
Sometimes
I wonder if Gary remembers me.
