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When I was barely 5, I lost two teeth in a bumper car accident.
The town where I was born has a Fourth of July festival called the Loggerodeo. We went every year because our good friends still lived there, even after we had moved away. That particular year, we decided to go to the carnival that afternoon, and our friends' teenage daughter offered to take me on the bumper cars. I was eager to go--I loved rides. So we got on the bumper car, and she tried to put the little loop belt around me. The ride operator did not bother to check that everyone on the ride was appropriately harnessed, and began the ride while the strap was still around my neck. The bumper car shot straight into the fender on the outside of the ride, and I whipped forward, landing teeth-first against the dashboard. Blood everywhere, the ride operator scooped me up and deposited me into my mother's arms, basically telling her that I was her problem now.
So I spent the Fourth of July, two days after my 5th birthday, in the hospital where I was born, stuck in a neck brace, because they feared that I had crushed my trachea since the loop belt had been around my neck. Fortunately, that turned out not to be the case, but two of my teeth (my left central incisor and the left lateral incisor) were knocked back, but not out. I had to have them removed a few days later with oral surgery, and had to have my right central incisor removed a month after that because the accident cut off the blood flow to it and it died.
My dad asked the company politely if they would pay the copays for my dental surgery, but they refused. In the end, he had an attorney friend draft a letter, and the amusement ride company (Rainier Shows, since gone out of business) ended up paying a settlement that paid for me to have more dental work (which prevented me from having to get braces later) and the attorney's fee.
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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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