Say "Aww S**t"

So instead of being on the beach today, I’m sitting here on my sofa wasting away on my computer. Why? Because I just recently had to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled, and per doctors orders I am stuck at home mumbling and drooling on myself even more than usual. Of course I pulled my first two wisdom teeth when I was in eighth grade, so it’s not like this is a new experience for me; but it doesn’t make it any more fun. As with many things in my life, I blame it on my dentist.

Now it’s nothing personal against dentists, but I hate them. There may be no activity in the world that I hate more than visits to the dentist (at least that doesn’t involve dysentery and/or the Jonas Brothers). At least with doctors, you go in when you see something is clearly wrong with you, such as your foot is facing the wrong direction or there’s a knife sticking out of your stomach. But with dentists, you have to go every six months so they can find something wrong with you. Oh and trust me, they will find something wrong with you. By golly, they didn’t pay all that money for grad school just so you could waltz out of there with no problems they could charge you ridiculous amounts of money to fix. They have to pay off all those grad school debts after all.

So the first thing they do is lean you back in a chair and shine a ridiculously irritating light in your face. You half expect Dick Cheney to show up with a bucket of water and a cattle prod. Then they grab everything they can get their hands on and shove it in your mouth. I bet they have bets in the back room on who can get the most and weirdest things into patients mouths. “Hey, did you hear Bob actually managed to put a putter and a shotgun in that kid’s mouth?” I particularly hate this part, because I don’t like people sticking things in my mouth. (You can give yourself a pat on the bat now for all the “she said jokes” you’ve just made.) Although to be honest, there are times when I feel sorry for them. I mean, mouths are disgusting places; I wouldn’t look in my mouth knowing all the things I’ve put in there. (Really? Again with the “she said?” If there was any other way to say this I would).

Anyways, they will then proceed to lecture you on the importance of flossing. If you were to listen to dentists, flossing would solve all of the world’s problems, including war and famine. Even though I don’t know any normal people that floss regularly (then again, I can’t say with any certainty I know any normal people period). Now I’ve been lucky enough to have pretty healthy teeth for most of my life, no braces and only a few cavities. But I just recently switched dentists, and apparently this guy has a very large grad school debt, because he was intent on finding things wrong with my mouth. They took out this thing they call a cavitron, which sounds more like a character from Transformers than something I would want to stick in my mouth. Speaking of characters from Transformers I would want to stick in my mouth, all of the critics need to stop criticizing Transformers 2 and Megan Fox. There was clearly a plot (robots fighting, Megan Fox, robots fighting, Megan Fox, guns) and character development (for instance, Megan Fox changed outfits several times).

Okay sorry, back to the point. My visit was almost over and I thought I was actually going to get out without something wrong with my teeth. I am clearly an idiot. Because my doctor said that I needed to remove another wisdom tooth, and frowned at my x-ray to show his level of concern. Having had multiple wisdom tooth surgeries, I still do not understand the whole concept. Apparently humans are filled with numerous body parts that we don’t actually need: appendixes, spleens, brains, etc. For some reason, we also have an extra pair of molars which we apparently evolved in order to eat trees. Or something like that; I could be mistaken with beavers. But apparently we stopped eating whatever we were eating because we stopped needing our third molars. So when these third molars come down from your brain or wherever teeth come from, they start messing up things in your jaw. But this is the part that still confuses me: not everyone has them. I’ve talked to people who have never had their wisdoms pulled, while others have all four pulled. For instance, the dentist said that my fourth tooth will probably never drop down so I don’t have to remove it. This concerns me, because that means it could be anywhere. For all I know I have a large hostile molar drifting around my brain, and one day I’m going to be talking and this tooth is going to stab my brain and I’m going to start seizing randomly.

So needless to say, I was a bit mad when I went in yesterday to have my surgery. Of course, it’s not the surgery I hate. The surgery in fact is awesome, thanks to the miracle of sedation. I just remember getting injected and the next thing I knew I was sitting on my couch at home feeling way happier than I should have considering there was a large bleeding hole in my mouth. It’s the recovery that isn’t too fun. First off, there is the aforementioned large bleeding hole in your mouth. You ever wonder why vampires are always so mean? It’s because blood does not taste good. And of course, that is all you will taste, because your dentist gives you a list of things that you can’t eat after surgery, which leaves you eating pudding for the next three days. They also told me to avoid strenuous activity, but that’s a personal policy I adhere to at all times anyway. On a positive note, they give you the tooth. I’m going to put it under my pillow and see what the tooth fairy gives me for it. I hope it’s a lot of money, because I needed the sedation mainly to deal with the bill.