New semester, new conspiracy.

Making my way across the Amsterdam bridge to EC (my first time ever entering the building, even though I am a senior, which is not relevant but does indeed add an extra air of absurdity to the tale), I took little time to appreciate the myriad statues decorating the plaza—I had seen them all before, of course, and I was focused on my singular goal of assessing my friend’s six-person suite all the way up on the 18th floor. But while scuttling past the tooth statue, more accurately known as Three Way Piece No. 1: Points, I heard someone make the following bold claim.

“I swear it wasn’t always so easy to move the tooth. I’m pretty sure they greased it for the freshman so they could feel good about themselves during NSOP.”

The statement did not make me stop in my tracks, but I have found it stuck in my head, a subtle poking pain (akin, perhaps, to overflossing teeth) ever since. I’m consumed by the question: Did they grease the tooth?

Evidence is mixed. I have witnessed people send the tooth spinning, with more ease than I have ever been able to; then again, I am very weak. I posed this question to my friends and associates and some claimed that, if anything, tooth mobility has gotten worse. It’s not something I feel qualified to research, and even if they had greased the tooth, who would admit it? Who would be tasked with it? A cohort of NSOP OLs sworn to secrecy? Columbia’s facilities workers? A physics professor distressed by the immobility of a once rotational statue? How would they do it? WD-40? A bottle of something like canola oil, poured gracefully into the crevices? Would they have to sacrifice their own teeth to make it work? But the tooth isn’t actually a tooth; apparently, it’s supposed to be a piece of flint.

Maybe it wasn’t greased. Maybe that anonymous someone was actually making a plea for help. Maybe I am destined to grease the tooth. Maybe I am the only one who can treat it right. Maybe it makes sense that it is, according to its creator Henry Moore, a recreation of flint rather than a portrayal of dental health. It has lit a fire in me that I cannot seem to put out. They greased the tooth. They didn’t grease the tooth. Oil only helps a fire burn. No one would actually think statue greasing is a necessary part of routine maintenance. 

If being at Columbia has taught me anything, it’s that some questions cannot be answered. (Well, that’s a generous interpretation. More accurately, it has taught me about syphilis, Aristotle, and set theory.) The truth of the tooth greasing might never be known, least of all to me. But like all good conspiracy theories, the answer is close enough for me to find out, a resolution I can almost grab with my hands, a loose filling I can fix with a twenty-minute in-office dental surgery. 

But also, they totally greased the tooth.

The statue pre-greasing via Bwarchives