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The irony of Phil’s situation is that the mouth guard actually protected his awful-looking real teeth – teeth he had longed to be rid of for years. Ever since his baby teeth fell out, giving way to gnarly, yellow daggers, Phil had dreamed of replacing them with a pristine set of dentures . His best dreams involved going to the dentist to have all of his teeth pulled out in one sitting. Then, he and the dental assistant would make mosaics out of the extracted teeth and give them to the dentist to hang on his fridge. The dentist would be so pleased he would give them each a free toothbrush…a toothbrush that was actually blowgun that shot poisonous needles. And then they would go to his uncle’s farm and shoot coyotes. For ten pelts, they could get a bottle of moonshine and some licorice shoelace at the trading post. It was all very unlikely, but that’s the way dreams usually are.

In Phil’s worst nightmare, which was equally unrealistic, he visited the dentist to have his horrid, crooked teeth pulled from his jawbones, but in this dream, Woe! There was a horrible twist to this tale, indeed. Instead of removing his teeth, the confused dentist removed Phil’s nose and cut his throat from ear to ear! Ugly and dying, Phil stumbled to his car which he planned to drive off the nearest cliff. Groggy from his operation, though, the poor, confused man, having put the automobile in reverse instead of drive, backed into a police car and was forced to postpone his suicide while the officer wrote up a ticket. To make matters worse, he had forgotten to wear pants that day!