Jujubes

After he gives you a filling or a crown or something, my dentist provides you a list of stuff not to eat. The list is old and looks like it has been copied a million times. The first item on the list is Jujubes, the chewy, gummy candy I associate with the mid-twentieth century. Jujubes were like a cross between gummy worms and granite. But really, what are my odds of eating Jujubes? Do they even still make those things? And what’s with that name? I think normal Jujubes maybe wouldn’t hurt your teeth if they were fresh. The problem was, they were always so stale…

Our kids’ pediatrician dentist had no individual examination offices, just this big room with kids all over the place. Kind of the one room school house look. And there was always one kid screamin’ somewhere in the room. Of course the dentist never made reference to the screaming kid. We were all supposed to ignore him. As a parent with my child though, I was always tempted to say something like, “I see you’ve got a screamin’ kid over there. Did you catch him with some Jujubes?”