Maybe I'm too engrossed with the concept of fate, destiny and omens, but when my back lower right tooth cracked on me more than a week ago, I was in denial. It started out as a chip, no pain. Then one day I realized I could push one half of the tooth to the side of my mouth.

What da hell?

I haven't been peeling the husk of coconuts with my bare teeth. Haven't been eating glass. Haven't even been eating kakimochi. Maybe I need to drink a half-gallon of milk every day and strengthen my bones and teeth. By last Thursday, it was time to call my dentist for an appointment. At first, they said the only available opening was in mid-June.

I did the math. Three more weeks of pain. NO NO NO.

It took some explaining. I suppose when a tooth cracks in half, I should always note to the receptionist that there is pain involved. She had no idea, so I spelled it out, and she found me an appointment in just five more days. Yes.

So I went in today with some feeling of dread, but also some feeling of relief. This time, though, the stuff they shoot with needles into my mouth to numb it didn't work 100 percent. That's a rarity. I have a great dentist, same guy who fixed my injured teeth 25 years ago. (The music in the office is also a few decades old. I can always count on hearing songs in there that I haven't heard since 1979. There's always David Gates and Bread, but think of all the '70s and '80s crooners who were even more obscure than him.)

So there was a third shot, and that did the trick. It hurt, but I'm the same guy who had three teeth pulled back in October or so, then went to work. That wasn't as bad as I had been warned. Doc tugged on the busted tooth a few times, and it was out. No gushing, either. Nothing like a fine professional to handle a messy deal.

I should add that going to my dentist is quite free of stress to begin with. A 10-minute drive. Lots of cool magazines. One inside the dental area, Hawaii Fishing News, showed a fisherman smiling as a humongous thresher shark (looked like a Great White to me) bared its teeth near the boat's hull (or is it bow?). I thought it was a little ironic that an animal with that many teeth is on the cover of a mag in a dentist's office. Who's gonna write a children's book about a family of sharks taking little Sharky Jr. to the dentist for the first time? (I will.)

The dentist's office is located in the midst of great places to eat (Pawaa). There's Daiei/Don Quixote with all its Asian eateries. There's ramen left and right. Zippy's. Even Jack in the Box. I passed on all. The suture and wound in my mouth needs to stay dry.

So here I am, with a folded square of gauze in the back of my mouth (yes, you ought to change it every 20 minutes just like the dental assistant says), thinking about how nasty that cracked tooth looked. Yes, they let me look. Maybe they remember my fascination with stuff like that. This is a tooth that was supposed to have been crowned. So much for that.

But I know this was a dentist day through and through. It was destiny, written in the floppy, beat-up notebook of my life. I know because I got a call in the morning, before my cracked tooth was extracted, from Maui sports radio guru Fred Guzman. He wanted to talk story on his show with me. His show is 11 a.m. to noon -- the exact time I was at the dentist. I got done by 11:30, but my mouth was numb, I had to keep it dry (let the area dry out and clot) and I decided not to push my luck. I've been pulling back on a lot of things lately, and it's good. It's when I don't take care of priorities -- paying bills on time, rushing here and there -- that I forget to do the basic things. And that leads to problems, like teeth trouble.

So no cold food or drinks. No drinking out of a straw. No hot food. No spicy food. In other words, everything that I normally eat is out of my life. At least for 24 hours. What are the alternatives? As I shopped in Longs Drugs Mo'ili'li (after a stop at the pharmacy for the painkiller drug that I probably will never use), it was tough to find something I can eat that won't leave crumbs or morsels that could jam up the slightly-bleeding hole in my mouth.

Soup or ramen is out. Too hot. A sandwich? Too cold. Smoothie? Too cold. Pizza? Too hot. Auuggggh.

I have oatmeal at home. Let it cool off. Not bad. Then I remembered: mochi at the front of the store. Not hot. Not cold. Not spicy. No crumbs. Mochi, mochi, mochi. I passed on my preference -- crumbly, flaky manju -- and picked up the soft bean mochi. I ended up buying $38 worth of groceries after planning to get just a couple of items. Longs is the best. They also know how to suck money out of my wallet with all their cool foodstuff on sale.

Boiled peanuts. Ketchup. (Hard to find, but the nice shelf stacker girl was very helpful.) Corned beef hash. That was on sale. I even got this new item, a Thai tapioca coconut milk dessert. Just add water and woila. For a buck, it looked great, just like the dessert they serve at Keo's.

I started to wonder if the pharmacy takes awhile to get my drugs ready just so I linger even longer and buy more stuff. Of course, that's not true. There were a lot of folks like me waiting on their medication. But Longs in itself is kind of a drug. Air conditioned, lots of interesting, varied types of food, good prices in general and no annoying music piped in.

Previous Article: Numbers
Next Article: The other side of Khan