When I was around six years old, I was eating a ham sandwich at a deli with my mother, when one of my bottom teeth went all wiggly into the bread. “You have a loose tooth!” my mother said, like this was something I should have been excited about. I was not. We both cried all the way home — her, because it had just struck her that her first baby would soon become a real participant in a painful world, and me, because I’d grown attached to those teeth and didn’t see why I should need new ones, plus 12 extra.