Part 6

The Power of a Smile to Change Lives:  Denny’s Story Part 6

So far only Denny's wife and the ladies at the dental office had seen him, and he had yet to make his public debut.  Of course, all this involved was a trip to his daughter’s house for a home-cooked dinner, but it was public enough.  He acknowledged that new dentures had made him look different, but that was a far as he would go.  As he was walking out of the dental office, the girls had told Denny that he looked handsome.  He hadn’t been handsome in years.

“Awww, quit blowing smoke.”  Denny chose to leave the second half of the sentence unspoken.

The girls protested, there was no smoke to be blowing, but Denny figured they were just spinning the flattery.  Brushing them off, he made his next appointment at the front desk, tucked the card into his shirt pocket and waved his goodbye.

Dinner at his daughter’s house was a weekly tradition.  She and her husband would invite them over, and the guys would talk guy talk while Paula enjoyed time with their grandkids.  Not that Denny didn’t like the grandchildren, but they never seem to warm up to him.  Paula just had a gift with them, he supposed.  Some grownups were intimidating to kids, and Denny must have fallen into that “scary” category.  It was something he tried to ignore, especially when the feeling stung a little.

Since receiving his new dentures, Denny had been practicing for a few days on how to use them.  He tried out different types and textures of foods, figuring out what it took to bite and chew.  The old dentures had been so different that his muscles had to retrain themselves just to get through a plate of pasta.  Breaking them in gently like a pair of new shoes, Denny gingerly worked up from easy to harder foods, finding new things each time that he could eat.  

A surprise Denny encountered was that his speech was a little slurred.  Dr. Yeoman had warned him this would happen and recommended he practice in the mirror or read out loud to himself until it improved.  He realized the hardest part was retraining his sloppy muscles into behaving correctly.  Practice certainly had improved them and now his diction was more precise.  He wanted to get these things nailed down ahead of time so he didn’t appear too awkward at his debut into society.

Denny rang the doorbell as Paula was still gathering up some things from the car.  The door flew open with all the carelessness of a twelve year old school girl.  

“Hi Grandpa!” she chirped and immediately turned to skip back to whatever had held her little-girl’s interest before her mother had made her answer the door.  Something stopped her mid-hop.  Spinning around and looking back at the man still standing at the door, she blurted out, “Grandpa!  You look nice!”  As that was all the attention and focus she could muster, she was off again in a flash.  Denny was left standing there wondering what just hit him.  Nice?  His granddaughter had called him nice.

When Paula caught up to him at the door, she found him grinning to himself like a fool.

Denny’s Story Part 5 Part 6