"Dad's Teeth" or "Find the Bone"

CRRUNCH! / CRRACK!

I remember my dad at the dinner table when I was in early elementary school.  You could have cut the tension with a knife, but you'd better have worn rubber gloves to avoid electrocution.  That's when our nuclear family (both parents & two sibs) still ate dinner together--before the core melted.

To say that Dad chewed REALLY HARD is an understatement.  The muscles of his jaw and temples flexed and bulged as if he were competing for the Mr. Universe title with his face.  His teeth chomped with piston-like action with a force of, say, 200 psi.  His expression, intense.  Somber.  He took little pills before dinner with "R's" stamped on them, which at the time, I thought stood for Remus, but later (in pharmacology) realized was the drug manufacturer's ID.  The drug was for--not surprisingly--treating ulcers.

No matter what he ate, his chewing was LOUD, like a slow jackhammer on granite.  Or perhaps "repeated blasting to destroy an old dam" would be a more accurate simile.  He sat at the head of the table, and I sat on his immediate right, between him and Mom.  Like the Son sitting at the right hand of an angry, hard-chewing God.  Come to think of it, I was often placed between my dad and mom--including on long car trips.  I WAS A HUMAN BUFFER!  I absorbed countless megawatts of electricity this way as a child.  Maybe that's why my nerves are now shot.

Anyway, what I'm building up to is this:  Dad would ALWAYS FIND THE BONE--EVEN IN FOODS THAT DON'T NORMALLY CONTAIN BONES.  Hamburger, for instance.  Maybe one out of 400 hamburgers will contain a bone chip.  His odds were more like one out of 40, and if one of us Remus's was gonna get that one in 40, it would be HIM.  ALWAYS. It was as if his teeth could bite into another dimension.  A dimension where everything--including pudding--contained bones.  He'd be chomping and grinding along happily (though expressing "happiness" more like an alligator than a human), and suddenly, you'd hear a huge CRACK from deep inside his skull.  It resonated like a gun shot.

Then, for a moment, silence.  The tension built as he mentally rose up out of alligator consciousness to figure out what had just happened.  Then he would spit out a grey lump, and finger his molar.  

"$%*@!" He grumbled, hauling the cracked tooth from his maw.  "WELL, OF ALL THE...(anger mounting)...$@#%..." his tongue exploring the new molar landscape.  He held up and examined the tooth.  "THAT'S A #%$ OF A..." or was that a bone fragment?  It was hard to say.  And he stomped off to further examine things with the aid of a mirror and flash light. 

Dessert, anyone?