For some reason there was a vein of teeth that had developed without jaw or appetite in the earth, like precious stones or metals.

The toothless came here to bite the earth and to come away with teeth stabbed into their gums.

No telling what one would come up with, tusks, tiny mouse teeth…A toothless man no longer toothless cried through hippopotamus teeth, I have got myself handsome with a smile full of hippopotamus teeth!

Ah, but teeth are designed to a diet. He with cows’ teeth ate grass saying, I do not like grass, but I eat grass because it fits my teeth. A cripple who must wear an ugly shoe; never mind the glass slipper. If the shoe fits, wear it.

And so they wore their teeth like shoes. Many allowing this wisdom walked on their teeth. Others, moving one more step in logic, kicked their feet into the earth, driving teeth into their feet.

These are funny shoes, said some, but if the shoe fits…

Others began to chew their food by stamping on it.

And so they came one more step in logic, and stuffed shoes in their mouths, crying, we have got leather teeth.

It was terrible that dentistry had come so far only to die at the foot of human logic.

—”The Death of Dentistry,” from The Tunnel, by Russell Edson