"Tooth or Consequences"

By Jerry Zezima

My orthodontist is a gem. That’s why he suggested I buy an ultrasonic retainer cleaner that my wife can wash her jewelry in.

I got retainers several years ago when I decided to go straight, not because I was a crooked jewel thief, but because two of my teeth were crooked and needed straightening.

I went to the Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine on Long Island, New York, so my right upper lateral incisor and my left central lower incisor could be rotated back to their original positions with invisible braces, which weren’t actually invisible because otherwise, let’s face it, how could I find them?

Once my wayward ivories were realigned, which saved me the trouble of going to a mechanic, I got retainers. I wear them at night to keep my teeth on the straight and narrow, even though the mouth where they reside is deep and wide.

On a recent visit to Stony Brook for my yearly follow-up, I met Dr. Andy Lin, the latest in a long line of orthodontic residents who have had the dubious honor of treating me.

“Please pop your retainers in so I can see how they fit,” Dr. Lin said.

I did as instructed, first the top, then the bottom.

“They’ve kept your teeth nice and straight,” he noted. “But part of the top retainer on the left side has broken off. I can clip the end and smooth it out with an acrylic bur so it won’t cut your tongue.”

“While I’m still wearing it?” I asked nervously.

“No,” the good doctor assured me. “You wouldn’t want a bur in your mouth.”

“You could probably fit a jackhammer in there,” I said.

“We use that for drilling,” said Dr. Lin, who took my upper retainer to a back room, clipped and smoothed it, and returned a few minutes later. “Try it now,” he said.

I popped it in.

“It feels much better,” I told him. “Now I won’t speak with a forked tongue.”

Dr. Lin spoke with a funny tongue when he told me that he was the class clown in dental school.

“I did a lot of stupid things,” he said. “In an oral surgery class, when we were shown how to do stitches, we had to bring in bananas. I brought in a watermelon.”

“Did you have braces as a kid?” I asked.

“Yes, four times,” said the doctor, flashing a nice smile. “But I never had retainers. I’m too lazy.”

“I’ve been told the best way to keep them clean is with dishwashing liquid,” I said. “It might be easier just to put them in the dishwasher.”

“They’d come out in clumps,” said Dr. Lin, adding that I could use water and hydrogen peroxide or get a box of retainer tablets.

The best way to clean retainers, he said, is with an ultrasonic cleaner, a small, plastic and stainless steel machine that uses UV sterilization.

“I use one to clean my jewelry,” Dr. Lin said. “I even put my glasses in there.”

“Can I clean my wife’s jewelry?” I asked.

“Sure,” said the doctor. “But maybe you should start with your retainers.”

I went online and ordered the device, which cost $49.99. When it arrived, I plugged it in, filled it with water, put in my retainers, closed the lid and pressed the button.

Five minutes later, my retainers were spotless.

“They’re nice and clean,” said my wife, Sue.

“Do you want me to clean your jewelry?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

Undeterred, I took off my silver wedding band, the only piece of jewelry I own, and put it in the ultrasonic machine. When the ring came out, it looked like new, even though it’s 46 years old.

“It shines!” Sue exclaimed.

“Now do you want me to clean your jewelry?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It has stones. If they get ruined, you’ll have to buy me new ones.”

“I’ll stick with cleaning my retainers,” I said. “I can’t afford to put my money where my mouth is.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Some Like It Cold"

By Jerry Zezima

When you get to be a certain age — in my case, old — you tend to run hot and cold, which not only is true but also rhymes.

The reason is that no matter what the temperature is inside or outside, it’s either too hot or too cold.

That is why my wife, Sue, called a technician named Joe to come over and fix the upstairs thermostat, which had been making the second floor feel like a sauna.

“Maybe we should start wearing towels,” I told Joe.

“You can do whatever you want after I leave,” he said.

I explained that Sue and I don’t like to be hot and that we prefer the cold weather.

“Except for sleet, which was invented when God had a sinus infection,” I added.

“I’d rather be warm,” said Joe, who works for a heating company that installed our central air-conditioning system over the summer so Sue and I could stay cool.

“Every year, I lugged two huge AC units upstairs to put in the bedroom and office windows,” I said. “But when I turned 70, I didn’t want to sweat the big stuff anymore.”

“You’re 70?” Joe asked.

“Yes,” I answered proudly. “I’m officially a geezer. And when you get to be this age, no temperature feels right. You’re always either too hot or too cold.”

“My parents are in their 70s,” said Joe, who’s 46. “They say the same thing.”

That’s why I have convinced Sue that I don’t have to change my seasonal wardrobe. I leave summer and winter clothes out all year because you never know what the temperature is going to be inside or out.

“There’s no such thing as climate control,” I told Joe. “I found that out when I worked in an office building. It would be freezing in the summer, when the air-conditioning was cranked up, and steaming in the winter, when the heat was on. I felt like bringing a suitcase with a change of clothes.”

“Yes,” Joe acknowledged, “office temperatures can be difficult to regulate.”

“One brutally hot summer day,” I remembered, “I called the National Weather Service to see if my workstation qualified as the coldest spot in the United States.”

“What did they say?” Joe wondered.

“No one answered,” I said. “I guess it’s tough to pick up the phone when you’re wearing mittens.”

Ever since I retired, I haven’t had to deal with such frustrating fluctuations. But now we were having trouble in the house.

“When you get older, you feel the temperature more,” I said. “Yesterday, when it was nice, I went outside. It was too warm in the sun, so I stepped into the shade. It was really chilly.”

“What did you do?” Joe asked.

“I came back inside,” I said. “The downstairs was cold and the upstairs was hot. I’m a man for all seasons. Unfortunately, it’s never the one we’re supposed to be having.”

Sue, who said she couldn’t wait for snow, controls the two thermostats, one upstairs, the other down, because I would press the wrong buttons and turn the house into either a meat locker or a steam bath.

But lately the heat had been going on so high upstairs that Sue and I routinely woke up feeling like we had been camping out in the Amazon.

“Let me see what I can do,” said Joe, who worked for about 20 minutes on the thermostat, which seemed so complicated that it must have been manufactured by NASA.

There are five buttons on the bottom, including Negative (which lowers the temperature) and Positive (which raises it). There are also three settings on the screen: Mode, Menu and Fan, with Permanent Hold, Next and Auto thrown in for good measure.

“Pick a temperature,” Joe told Sue, “and hit Permanent Hold.”

Sue picked 67 (it had been 70) and set it.

“Now,” said Joe, much to Sue’s delight, “it won’t be like a sauna.”

“And we won’t have to wear towels?” I asked.

“Not while I’m here,” he answered.

I smiled and said, “Cool.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"The 2024 Zezima Family Christmas Letter"

By Jerry Zezima

Since I am in the holiday spirit (and, having just consumed a mug of hot toddy, a glass of eggnog and a nip of cheer, the holiday spirits are in me), I have decided to follow in that great tradition of boring everyone silly by writing a Christmas letter.

That is why I am pleased as punch (which I also drank) to present the following chronicle of the Zezima family, which includes Jerry, the patriarch, and Sue, the matriarch, as well as two daughtersiarch, two sons-in-lawiarch, five grandchildreniarch and a partridge in a pear tree.

Dear friends:

It sure has been an eventful year for the Zezimas!

Things got off to a hot start, mainly with birthday candles, when Jerry turned the big 7-Oh. His 70s show featured four parties in three different places: one at his mother’s house (more on her in a moment), one at his older daughter’s house and two at his own house. When the festivities were over, the new old man took a nap.

The day after Jerry turned 70, he got an email urging him to buy burial insurance.

He might have needed it if it hadn’t been for his cardiologist, who detected a tick in his ticker and ordered Jerry to take a battery of tests, including a stress test (he stressed out two nurses), an echocardiogram (he kept making echo noises for the technologist) and a heart calcium score (he asked the radiologist what the score was and if he was winning).

It was determined that Jerry needed open-heart surgery. This was confirmed by a cardiac surgeon, who compared himself to a plumber. Jerry asked if the operation would be performed at Home Depot.

The day before the scheduled procedure, the surgeon called Jerry to say he didn’t need an operation after all. The news gladdened Jerry’s heart. But just to be safe, and on doctor’s orders, he has stopped lifting anything heavier than a glass of red wine, which he considers over-the-counter heart medicine.

Sue had a medical issue of her own: torn ligaments in her thumb that actually did require surgery. While she was recuperating, Jerry took over the cooking and laundry duties without burning down or flooding the house.

Speaking of home, sweet home, Sue and Jerry’s humble abode needed procedures of its own.

They included a bathroom renovation (for picking out a lovely shade of beige, Jerry was crowned the Prince of Paint, after which he sat on the throne), a central air-conditioning system (the only thing that could make Jerry cool) and major electrical work (which was needed when Jerry couldn’t figure out how to change a lightbulb).

Jerry won the year’s biggest election when all five grandchildren voted for him to keep his mustache. The only opposing vote was cast by Sue, who said it tickles when he kisses her, which is often.

In other exciting news, Jerry passed an online driving course (he graduated motor cum laude), he participated in the Big Climb (a fundraiser for cancer research in which he climbed 2,500 steps at Citi Field in New York and didn’t keel over), he participated in a pun contest (10 years after winning, he returned but only made the semifinals, though as the oldest contestant, he was pun for the ages), he took his grandson to a dinosaur museum (and was considered the best fossil), he bought a pair of slides (size 13!), he took Sue’s car to be washed (and met a guy who used to work in a diamond mine in Brazil, though he couldn’t bring a gem back home to Sue), and he and Sue had a new lawn installed (immediately after which there was a drought).

But the highlight of the year was the 100th birthday celebration for Jerry’s mother, Rosina, who was the life of the party and for whom love and laughter are the secrets of her longevity.

Merry Christmas with love and laughter to you and your family, too, from the Zezimas.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Pranks a Lot"

By Jerry Zezima

Whenever I pull a prank, which generally involves my grandchildren, whose maturity level is way above mine, I think outside the box.

This is a wise strategy because I can’t fit inside the box. And even if I could, the air supply to my brain would be cut off and I’d be even more immature, which admittedly would make me a better prankster.

Still, I proved to be a pretty good one when I pulled a birthday prank on my wife, Sue, with a box I didn’t have to think outside of. That’s because I got inspiration from the best prankster I have ever known: my longtime buddy Tim Lovelette.

Sue, Tim and I were members of the notorious class of 1975 at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, where our shenanigans were even crazier than those in the 1978 frat-house comedy “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” Maybe we should sue for theft of intellectual property.

Anyway, while Sue was an innocent bystander and I engaged in silly but mostly harmless pursuits that seldom involved actual schoolwork, Tim set the standard because his pranks not only were pulled on a daily basis, but sometimes involved live snakes.

When Sue and I recently met up with Tim and his wife, Jane, whom we hadn’t seen in a long time, Tim excitedly told me about Prank-O, a company specializing in gift boxes for products that don’t exist.

That’s why, like my head, the boxes are empty.

“It’s American ingenuity at its finest,” Tim assured me. “You have to look into this.”

I called Prank-O, which is headquartered in Minnesota, though not in a big-box store, and spoke with head honcho Ryan Walther.

“I thought I had it made because I’m paid to write stuff that has no redeeming social value,” I told him. “But you pull pranks for a living. It sounds like a dream job.”

“That’s why I do what I do,” said Ryan, who was one of the original partners in The Onion, the satirical news outlet that lives up to its name by making readers cry with laughter. “It has served me well in life.”

His life as a prankster began as a kid, when he discovered the brilliance of the Pet Rock, a collectible toy made in 1975 by advertising executive Gary Dahl, who put small rocks inside cardboard boxes with air holes (for breathing, of course) and sold more than a million of them.

“That guy was one of my heroes,” said Ryan, who went on to co-found Prank-O in 2009, when he and his business partner, Arik Nordby, fulfilled their dream of injecting laughter into the solemn ritual of gift-giving.

Now 50, with a wife and four kids who are “bewildered” at what he does and parents who are “proud that their son is an empty-box baron,” Ryan has grown up (sort of) to run a company (pranko.com) whose amazing products include the Squirrel Hot Tub, the Noggin Net and the Dream Griddle.

There’s also Roto Wipe (“Say goodbye to costly toilet-paper costs!”) and the Pasta Recycler (“Make used pasta almost like new again!”).

“These products don’t actually exist?” I asked.

“That’s right. We sell empty boxes for $8.99 each,” said Ryan, who went on “Shark Tank” in 2018 and got businessman and show judge Mark Cuban to offer $640,000 for a share in the company, although the deal fell through.

“But you did prank him,” I pointed out.

“Yes. The world needs laughter and we’re here to help,” said Ryan, adding that gift-givers can put real gifts in the empty boxes.

One of his favorites is the Pasta Recycler, which I got for Sue as a birthday present.

“What’s this?” she wondered after she unwrapped the box, which I filled with uncooked spaghetti because her real gift, a raincoat (isn’t it romantic?), wouldn’t fit.

“My gift to you,” I cooed. “Happy birthday!”

“Is this a prank?” Sue asked.

“Yes!” I answered proudly.

“Here’s another one,” she said. “We’re having pasta for dinner. And you can make it.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima