I WISH I'D LOOKED AFTER ME TEETH.
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth, And spotted the perils beneath,
All the toffees I chewed, And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
I wish I'd been that much more willin' When I had more tooth there than fillin'
To pass up gobstoppers, From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin'.
When I think of the lollies I licked, And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little, All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My Mother, she told me no end, "If you got a tooth, you got a friend"
I was young then, and careless, my toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right, I flashed it about late at night,
but up-and-down brushin' and pokin' and fussin'
didn’t seem worth the time... I could bite!
If I'd known I was paving the way, To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fiIlin's injections and drillin's
I'd have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lay in the old dentist's chair, and I gaze up his nose in despair,
and his drill it do whine, In these molars of mine,
"Two amalgam," he'll say, "for in there."
How I laughed at my Mother's false teeth, As they foamed in the waters
beneath,
But now comes the reckonin' It's “
me” they are beckonin'
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me teeth.
By Pam Ayres.