It is hard to say just how long Deady Dude hung improbably onto Milo’s front gum. Milo says five years, which seems something of an exaggeration. But certainly three years is possible, perhaps longer. Either way, Deady Dude enjoyed one of the more remarkable runs in baby-tooth history. He was the Lebron James of dentistry, and we will always remember him.

Like most of history’s more problematic, complex figures, Deady Dude did not develop in a vacuum. There is always context, and continuum; and Deady Dude’s started in early 2016, long before his notoriety began.

Milo was a reckless toddler, and loved to thrash around on his ‘Mimi’, a $20 plastic ride-on fire engine from K-Mart, gifted to him by some well meaning friend or aunt. I guess we were equally reckless parents, or perhaps we just had no idea what we were doing. The line between fostering independence and inviting injury is so fine, and often impossible to identify as a first-time parent. Actually, perhaps that line remains elusive for every parent, forever, regardless the number of children or length of parenting resume. Today’s Mimi becomes tomorrow’s Can they walk home from school alone? and the day after’s Is a full-length back tattoo of Patrick Ewing a good idea?

Anyway, one morning I allowed an 18-month-old Milo to ride his Mimi down a rather steep concrete ramp, and, somewhat embarrassingly, filmed it. Mimi had no brakes, that should be obvious, and Milo’s little feet were not strong enough to adequately overcome the relentless persistence of gravity; and so, enterprisingly, he employed a little assistance from his face.

In my defence, despite the swollen lip and blood, his teeth appeared fine.

Some months later, under Kuepps’ watchful eye, Milo slipped while clambering up a ladder at a crappy neighbourhood park and dinged one of his front teeth. Over the course of the next 12 months the tooth blackened and became increasingly funky until, following a sheepish visit to a dentist, poor Milo had it removed under general anaesthetic. It is unclear which injury played the leading role in this unfortunate outcome; as is always the case, no one parent is to blame, and no one parent is ever fully exonerated.

So, like a tall person who finds themself unexpectedly sleeping alone in a queen-sized bed, Milo’s other front tooth took advantage, and began growing diagonally into the space.

When, finally, an adult tooth appeared in the gap, the diagonal tooth began jutting forward, as the diagonal sleeper does, reluctantly, when the co-sleeper returns in the middle of the night; not vacating the space but accommodating slightly. Perhaps I have stretched this metaphor too far.

So now we had ‘Snaggle’ (as the diagonal, jutty-outy tooth was dubbed), and a very languid adult tooth growing at a slight angle in the gap, pushing Snaggle into an ever more audacious contortion.

By now Milo, quite reasonably, was rather sensitive about his teeth. He refused to pull Snaggle out, despite its alarming wobbliness. No amount of financial enticement could lure it (even with me dressed as a nightmarish tooth-fairy), no number of stern warnings from dentists, no corn cobs, no toffees, nothing. Until Snaggle stuck out so far that Milo had to rearrange it every time he wanted to fully close his mouth.

It should be pointed out that most of the Snaggle saga played out within the private confines of COVID lockdown. Had the wider community witnessed Snaggle, coupled with his horrendous lockdown haircut (super high forehead fringe trim with unkempt mullet), we would certainly have been reported to family services, or at least shamed in private parental whatsapp groups.

Snaggle finally fell out on Tuesday 15 June 2021, whilst playing ‘Pokemon Bus Driver’. I know this because it featured in the blog that recorded our second stint of COVID hotel quarantine:

Milo’s front tooth fell out. Affectionately known as ‘snaggle’, this was long in the making. It is now in an empty pill box in the front of the suitcase. Not sure what to do with it now.

Snaggle’s long overdue dislodgement revealed to us another wobbly little guy, the next one along, perhaps that’s an eye tooth? Certainly, one of the carnivore focused ones. Overjoyed by the apparent return to some sort of normalcy inside Milo’s mouth, we thought nothing at all of this wobbly little white pea. But sometimes, when you remove a despot, it only creates room for another, more dastardly tyrant to emerge. Be careful what you wish for.

Deady Dude was born.

So, for the next three years or so we sometimes paid attention to Deady Dude, and sometimes ignored him. A full-sized adult tooth grew at a slanty angle over the top of this wobbly little kernel, whose transition from white, to whiteish, to greyish, to grey, to blackish was therefore largely obscured. We can’t recall when Milo anointed him ‘Deady Dude’’, but presumably it was around the grey or blackish stage.

What I can recall however, is that over the last 12 months of this period, Milo started to alert us to the fact that he was quite regularly forcing Deady Dude back into its little hole, as it desperately and forlornly attempted to jettison itself from his face. He provided this information to keep us informed, but also to troll us, as the update was always accompanied by a provocative little grin. We usually took the bait, shaking our fists and warning him of the dire future consequences of his folly. He usually shrugged, smiled, and walked away, muttering something about braces.

Eventually Deady Dude gave up trying to escape and a strange, translucent pink pseudo-gum grew up and over, holding him in place. The human body is indeed a strange and adaptable organism.

You awful parents, I hear you say, didn’t you take Milo to the dentist, and what did the dentist do about it? And the answers are yes, regularly, and… not much.

You see the dentist, like most people (including us) misunderstood Milo’s commitment to everything, and utter lack of flexibility. Visit after visit, year after year, the dentist (which changed as we moved city to city) would say “ah, don’t worry, it will fall out by itself.” But it didn’t.

By the end, Kuepps and I were taking it in turns to accompany him, to spread the parental scrutiny. We had some continuity with the same dentist, and the visits were becoming more strained, and more judgy. Milo, as ever, was entirely unfussed by the tut tutting of his parents, and by the judgement of the entire dental profession.

And then one morning, on 12 September 2024, Milo informed me that Deady Dude was “really, really painful” and perhaps that weekend he might be willing for me to have a look at it. And by that afternoon, after school, Deady Dude sat in a small ziplock bag in the front pouch of his backpack, like an inconsequential, shrivelled little dried-out black corn kernel. This despotic little bean that had ruled our dental lives for more than three years, that had caused such consternation, debate and parental stress, now a trivial little artifact in a bag. What was all the fuss about? Milo displayed zero remorse, zero regret and zero emotional attachment to his weird little mouth companion. I offered to drill a tiny hole in it and present it to him on a golden chain to wear around his neck. No interest. Milo simply moved on with his life.

So what did we learn from all of this? Not much. I doubt there are any insights from the Snaggle/Deady Dude saga that dramatically shift our view of Milo as a human-being; all of it was entirely consistent with what we know of him, his brain, and how he likes to navigate the universe.

There’ll be more of this in future no doubt, maybe not teeth, but something. And we will of course fall for the same traps, tie ourselves in knots with stress, and ultimately Milo will change course once more, when he is good and ready.

Vale Deady Dude.

Not a picture of Deady Dude, that’s way too gross. Just a tube of GC Tooth Mousse.