31. Teeth

I’m a fan of evolution. I think it’s a super neato idea and it makes sense to me. You have Creature A who survives in Environment A with Requirement A, then Environment B comes along and Creature A needs to adapt to Requirement B and the next generation becomes Creature B. This pattern continues. Life goes on. Things change. Cool. Got it. I’m all for that.

And then we get to the modern day human.

For the most part, we’re pretty remarkable creatures. We’re pretty fast on our feet, we have the eyesight of a hunter, we have crazy wicked brains, we can multi-task, and we invented the internet. We’re pretty much solid, even if we totally would’ve become dinosaur food if we hadn’t come around 65 million years afterward. But, overall, not bad for a bunch of apes.

I think there are just two things left that need to evolve:

1. Our compassion for each other
2. Our teeth

The first one, I don’t feel like getting into right now, but the second one…

Boy have I got a thing or two to say about teeth. To put it bluntly, I hate the design of human teeth. Depending on your diet, genetic disposition, hygiene, and insurance overage, your teeth will either be perfect little angels in your mouth, or turn into tantrum-throwing toddlers every chance they get. I’m stuck with the latter. I’ve got the kind of teeth that prefer to sprout crooked along the bottom row, squeeze in uninvited wisdom, and plague me with hard-to-reach corners that fester and decay like teenagers without adult supervision. I’ve got the teeth that fart in elevators and push old ladies to cut in line at the supermarket. My teeth are jerks.

Evolutionarily speaking, human teeth seem confused between adjusting to our meat-eating tendencies and sustaining their vegetative diets of yore. We’re not helping our evolution by having such a split between carnivores and vegetarians. Our future generations’ teeth won’t know if they need to tear through a steak or gnaw on some arugula. My opinion is that our teeth are too weak. We need thicker enamel and sturdier jaws. We should not need braces. Nowhere in our evolutionary timeline should we require pieces of metal to keep us aligned.

I’m not saying we should all be carnivores. Yes I am. But don’t listen to me. I just have weak teeth and I don’t want to take responsibility for my bad cleaning habits. But there, again, lies my ultimate problem with our current state of teeth evolution: they’re doomed from the start. If we don’t constantly upgrade our toothbrushes, pastes, and washes, our teeth will fall right out of our heads. Our teeth are worse with planned obsolescence than the automobile and tech industry combined. They’re made to fail. While a good diet can keep the rest of your bones healthy, a good diet can also leave food stuck between your teeth, and even a piece of rogue broccoli can spell disaster for a molar.

It’s just not fair. I don’t have to floss my ribs or brush my spinal cord with Colgate. Those bones do just fine on their own. Can we please, in a couple generations, come up with something more stable and resilient than what we’ve currently been using to chomp our foot with?