“Don’t get your teeth veneered,” Elmer’s girlfriend said. “ know a girl who did that, and she had bad breath ever since.”

Elmer had never of such a thing. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “ are made of plastic. Plastic doesn’t give you breath.”

Hannah asked him if he had ever a public phone right after some stranger had on it. “The plastic phone stinks from their ,” she said. “Why do you always have to with me?” He told her that he didn’t with her—she was the one who always argued him.

Elmer saw his dentist a week later. asked if veneers could cause bad breath. The told him that it was possible, because plastic retain odor. He said a more common cause bad breath from dental work was fillings. Several had come to him because they thought they gotten bad breath from new fillings. He replaced fillings with different material, and their bad breath away.

“Well, should I get veneers for my front teeth?” Elmer asked. “I used to have chips in each tooth. Now, those chips are .” His dentist told him that applying veneers would destroying too much enamel, which the two teeth already deficient in. “I’ll bet you used to on lemons,” he said. Elmer nodded.

His dentist grinding down the chipped areas a little bit that their edges wouldn’t be so jagged. The , accompanied by a burning odor, took only a of minutes. When Elmer ran his tongue over “new” teeth, they felt nice and smooth. So decided that the $100 dentist bill was probably it. More importantly, he wouldn’t have to worry losing his girlfriend because of a couple of .