Great Sayings Revisited: Show your tooth colours

Show your tooth colours - saying
These guys have got the right idea.

“Show your tooth colours”, they say. We say: “Are you on drugs, you freak of nature?!”. Indeed, a pertinent and well-timed dismissal of one of the most obtuse and superfluous remarks known to mankind (not womankind, though). Unless you’re at the dentist, why would you want to show your tooth colours to anyone?

The problem is – teeth are white. Unless you’ve been drinking nothing but Coca-Cola and not brushing your teeth, then they’ll be black. For most of us, though, they’ll be white, or have a hint of yellow. Analogous to a rainbow teeth most certainly are not – so what in the name of cripes is this saying all about?

Show Your Tooth Colours

For most animals, including humans, teeth are used for mastication – one must process one’s food in order to swallow it. There’s no point trying to insert a loaf of bread into your face as this is not how food consumption works; you have to open your mouth, stuff the bread in, and then regulate the motion of your jaw to mush up the foodstuff.

As this occurs, flavours depart from the food along with nutrients, with your teeth shredding everything alive until your hoover (throat) yanks the processed mush forcefully down your gullet into your inner bin (stomach). Pretty it is not – tasty it most certainly is (depending on what you’re eating).

It’s natural for teeth to acquire chunks of food and discolouring during this process. Due to the delights of the toothbrush, however (and modern day dentistry techniques such as teeth whitening), it’s possible to have a fantastic batch of gnashers 24/7. No multi-coloured latter incisor, no disco light first premolar, and no communist red wisdom teeth.

One must only presume that in the past, when dentistry techniques were terrifyingly inadequate, everyone had an array of multi-coloured teeth to display. By saying “Show your tooth colours, Charles!” you could engage, around dinner parties, for instance, in a merry-go-round of bright colours to highlight the collective dental anguish. As such, this saying is anachronistic and should be abolished!

The Future of Teeth

Will humans even still need teeth in a few hundred years – we will evolve beyond their usefulness? There will come a time when we simply ingest food through bottles, gulping it down like lazy cretins as we become morbidly obese. It’s true, just watch Wall-E.

We presume the saying will morph into something such as “Show your gum colours” or “Show us that weird dangly thing at the back of your throat”. Whatever, so long as the fallacy of tooth colours dies a death we at Professional Moron will be chattering our teeth in excitement!

6 comments

  1. Didn’t Ian Drury get a Union Jack tattooed into his front gnashers? (Awesome song-writer and I always thought it was amazingly cool how he managed to present the image of being a ‘bovver boy’ and yet his lyrics were full of references to Noel Coward, Van Gogh, Einstein etc… A bit off-topic for teeth, but hey… 🙂 )

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    • I’m not sure about that one, but I know he used to date Jane Horrocks who is one super talented and lovely lady from Northern England. Was he on the Young Ones at one point? I forget, I’ve not seen the show in a few years. I might be thinking of Madness.

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      • I can’t remember either, it’s a while since I watched the Young Ones. I know Madness featured at least once (and on that note, I’ve seen Suggs fronting various documentaries lately – another wonderfully talented individual!).

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