I Used to Dream My Teeth Were Falling Out

I mean like all the time.  It was particularly horrifying.  I'd notice they were lose feeling and then when I'd reach up to check them they'd fall out in my hand.  I'd instantly taste that metallic flavor of blood in my mouth and my stomach with get tight in knots.  Then I'd run around frantically looking for a cup of milk to put them in.  I think I saw a public service announcement cartoon with a dinosaur who put a tooth in a cup of milk after it got knocked out in a soccer game.  Did I make this up?  I don't know, but this is what I do in my dream.  Look for milk and try and figure out where I can find a dentist.  I've read up on dreams before and I guess teeth falling out is a classic anxiety dream.  Seeing as I'm a classic anxiety person it isn't really shocking that even my dreams are haunted but I've always thought it was weird that this was my go to dream.  I wonder if it has anything to do with how horrifying I found losing teeth to be as a child.  I was not one of those kids who would pull teeth early.  Shoot I wasn't even one of those kids who would let my parents pull my teeth.  I wouldn't even wiggle a tooth.  Instead I'd just let it sit in my mouth, slowly getting a little lose each day, but also slowly healing a little bit as well, so there were be horrible weeks where part of my tooth had come completely off and the gum underneath had healed but the tooth hadn't come out so whenever I'd bite down on that side, pointy horribly sharp ends of the underside of my tooth would poke into my gums.  Really it was a mess.

Last night I had a different kind of anxiety dream.  I dreamed I was at my aunt Naomi's wedding talking on a bench with my grandmother.  I decided to go in to the party and when  looked down I realized I was completely topless.  So here I am in my dream frantically running around looking for a shirt.  I woke up in sort of a panic and realized I had a baby curled up besides me and I was sort of topless.  Was this the origins of my dream, my subconscious self was aware of the fact that my physical self was nursing and decided to add that detail to my dream?  But then there was my grandma and the benches, and the whole thing brought me back to last week when I was hanging out in the locker room at the gym waiting for my friend Melanie to finish blowing drying her hair.   While we were chatting a group of great grandmas strode in the room in varying degrees of undress after finishing their water zumba class.  One came over to me and started looking over my shoulder at some pictures of Peach I was checking out.  Then she got into her locker and grabbed her phone.  She turned back to me and started shoving her phone in my face showing my pictures of her grand kids and great grands.  Boobs were flying, very, very, very close to my face.  I tried desperately to not look to my right while my friend Melanie laughed it up watching my discomfort from the safety of the mirror ten feet away.  Good times at the gym!