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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Boomer with Attitude / News When it's teeth-pullin' time down South
Posted By John Grooms on Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 11:57 AM
You don’t joke with rural Southerners about teeth. Too many stereotypes, too many humiliating jokes, and too many missed kernels in their corn on the cob. Teeth problems were especially un-funny to Elizabeth Smith, a resident of Sumter, S.C., who made the news yesterday when ... well, let’s let our colleagues at Charleston’s Post & Courier tell it: “Sumter woman awarded $2 million after 13 teeth pulled.”
Other than the headline making it seem as if Ms. Smith won some sort of weird contest, this is no laughing matter. It turns out Ms. Smith, 28, had gone to a dental clinic in Metro-Sumter to have three teeth pulled, and, you guessed it, a dentist pulled those three, plus 13 others, turning the poor woman’s upper grill to gums. She sued and won. Evidently, the jury didn’t buy the dentist’s contention that he had simply misunderstood Ms. Smith. “I guess she said something about wanting to get rid of ‘some-a-vem teeth,’ and I thought she was saying she wanted ‘summer teeth.’ It could happen to anybody.”
Ms. Smith, for her part, may delay getting restorative surgery, as she has been informed that, having just a few teeth left, she is now eligible to compete in the Ms. Sumter Pageant. Ba-da-boom.
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