The Tooth Souvenir: Navigating France One Awkward Moment at a Time

Moving to a new country comes with all kinds of surprises, and in France, those surprises sometimes include dental memorabilia. While the French healthcare system is efficient and straightforward, adjusting to the cultural differences—and the language—can make even routine procedures feel like adventures. From navigating unfamiliar paperwork to receiving unexpected souvenirs, my experience getting a crown replaced became a unique reminder of life abroad.

A Crown Lost and Found: My First French Dental Adventure

There are a few moments in life when you question your most basic understandings. In my early days in this country, those moments happened at least once a week.

My teeth turned up in the back of a drawer this week. I had forgotten all about them.

In the first month that we had our apartment, I lost a crown off one of my teeth. It fell straight out of my mouth and down a street drain. An unlikely way to lose $500, at least that’s what the crown alone had cost me in New York, but it happened.

Getting it replaced in France was cheaper—about €100 in the end, plus 3 visits, which was all reimbursed by our insurance. (We have private insurance along with French coverage, which is not only suggested, but required for our visa.)

All of this happened before I spoke enough French to get directions, let alone navigate medical bureaucracy.

French healthcare is quite efficient, but French healthcare language is only slightly clearer than its American counterpart. Everyone was as helpful as they could be, even when my language skills faltered with anything beyond a simple greeting.

I met with the dentist and then scheduled a series of follow-up visits. We took a mold of my entire mouth, filling it with a material that set after about 10 minutes of deep nasal breathing. Not my favorite, but as good as it could be.

The Unexpected Souvenir: A Mold of My Teeth

After a few weeks of back-and-forth visits, it was done. I had gotten to know the dentist and the staff a bit, with the kind of familiarity that comes from seeing someone several weeks in a row. By the 3^rd visit, it was getting downright cordial.

When my last appointment was done, I paid the dentist, who brought out a credit card reader right there in the chair (still a bit odd to me). He then handed me the paperwork—along with a perfect mold of my teeth. He passed it over with a casualness that made it seem completely routine. For him, maybe it was.

I looked over at his assistant, who seemed to be smiling behind the mask and googles, her powder blue medical gear perfectly matching the walls to achieve a kind of green screen effect that made her into a floating head. She looked at me and then looked the teeth like they had just given me a gift.

Behind the oversized goggles, she seemed happy about them.

Should I be happy about them? I didn’t know what to say – not in French or in English.

"I don't want this," I told him, holding it like it some kind of weird dental trophy, which it was. "What am I going to do with it?"

He blinked, unfazed. “Qu'est-ce que je vais en faire ? Tu l'as payé.” (What am I going to do with it? You paid for it.)

Well yeah, but...

“I can’t just have an office full of these things,” the dentist continued. The floating-head assistant raised her eyebrows sympathetically, as if to say, “No, we can’t just have these laying around. You must understand.”

I didn’t really understand.

Her expression then changed back to the raised eyebrows, shiny-toy look and her floating head nodded as if to say, “You’ll enjoy them!”

I was confused and they were very clear. Language barriers aside, the teeth were mine, the mold of the teeth was mine. Not theirs. No backsies.

With that, she handed him a small bag. The dentist took the teeth from my hand, placed them inside along with my paperwork, and handed everything back. Just like that, I became the proud owner of a plaster model of my own teeth, neatly packaged in a medical-grade gift bag sporting the dentist’s office logo: two happy-looking toothbrushes crossed in a skull-and-crossbones style in front of a smiling tooth.

They smiled and waved with an enthusiastic Bonne journée! And I went home.

Quirks of Life Abroad

I figured I’d throw the teeth in a drawer and forget about them. I’d forgotten about the crown as well, I think. A year and a half later, it keeps popping up. It feels weird to just throw them out. Do you recycle them?

Every now and then, I’ll open a random drawer—looking for a corkscrew, a screwdriver, anything—and there it is. It’s a bit big and awkward almost anywhere. Is this some French legal thing?

I don’t even know what to search for on the internet and it feels a bit strange to ask someone out of the blue. I don’t think I know anyone here that well just yet.

Salut – as-tu eu une intervention dentaire récemment ?

Hey – have you had any dental surgery recently?

Est-ce que tu as déjà eu une couronne ?

Have you ever had a crown?

Est-ce qu’ils t’ont fait un moulage de tes dents ? Et ils t’ont renvoyé chez toi avec ?

Did they make a mold of your teeth? And then send you home with it?

Si oui, qu’est-ce que tu en as fait après ?

And if so, what did you do with it?

I can’t think of anyone I know here who’d get past the first question. Given how particular some of the folks I know are about certain things, it feels like I'd be asking them to take off their pants and hand them to me.

So – no, I haven’t asked.

Now I’m stuck with it, an occasional reminder of my early days here—fumbling through interactions and smiling awkwardly when I couldn’t quite catch the gist of what was being said.

I keep forgetting about it—out of sight, out of mind. But it always seems to reappear. Throwing it away feels wrong, even though I have absolutely no use for a replica of my own mouth. And every time I stumble across it, I picture that dentist, shrugging like handing someone a model of their teeth is the most normal thing in the world.

Is it?

It’s just one of those quirks of adjusting to life in France. The crown was fixed, the paperwork manageable, but the souvenir? It’s an oddly personal item. Too personal to display, but strange enough that throwing it away feels wrong.

Every time I stumble across it, I'm reminded of that moment at the dentist's—barely speaking the language, navigating a new system, and nodding along like getting a plaster mold of my teeth was completely normal.

It’s part of the scenery now, like the quirks of life abroad I’ve come to accept. So, the teeth stay—just another thing that makes life here a bit more... French?