The wisdom of teeth

I try to lead an interesting life, because if I don’t, then I have nothing good to write about. In fact, you can always tell that my week has been boring, because if it was, then I write a column on pop culture or music or the movies or Barack O’Bama’s continuing struggle with cigarettes. This is not one of those columns.

Last weekend, I had one of the most harrowing experiences of my young life. It wasn’t “educationally harrowing,” like wrecking a car or appearing on American Idol, and it wasn’t “life-threateningly harrowing,” like being mauled by a bear or going on tour with Metallica circa 1989. It was just pointlessly traumatic — I didn’t learn anything, and there was relatively little chance that I was going to die. It just ruined my entire weekend.

Have I sufficiently built up the drama yet? Good. I had my wisdom teeth taken out this weekend. And let me tell you: it was the stuff that sitcoms are made of.
So I got to the dentist’s office on Thursday around 10 a.m. After an hour of sitting in the waiting room reading Southern Living — the manliest publication I could find among the waiting room’s Redbook and Modern Homemaker-stocked publications — and listening to the John Tesh Yuppie Radio Hour John Tesh on 98.9, I got called to the back.

I sat down in the chair… I’m sorry, did I say “sat?”

I should have said “was strapped into the chair.” The nurse then proceeded to administer Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas), which exists for the sole purpose of making its victims forget everything they think about, and then think about thinking about things, and then giggle a little bit because their brain can’t keep up with itself, and then the brain wonders if it’s thinking these thoughts because it’s just been given laughing gas or if it normally thinks these thoughts and what’s so funny, I don’t know but it is…

The nurse, apparently then wanted to mess with my head, so she decided to strike up a conversation, asking, “So do you have a job?”

“Yeah, kind of,” I said, between fits of laughter, “I write, a, a, a, a column in the local paper. Hahahahahahahahahaha.”

“Oh, that’s neat. What do you write about?”

“Well, (giggle), anything, really. Uh, probably, uh, this. Maybe even this conversation.”

“Well honey,” the nurse replied in the most saccharine voice she could muster, “I don’t think you’ll be remembering this conversation when you wake up.”

Sensing that she was probably right, I said, “Uh, maybe. We’ll see.”

Four hours later, I woke up on my couch in a sedative-induced haze, with a complete lack of feeling in my mouth. I have no recollection of the events that transpired in that missing time window, but I believe it involved wisdom teeth surgery, charades and the band Hanson.

For the next sixteen hours, my world was consumed by sleep.

And then… pain. Like no other pain I had ever experienced in my entire life. It turns out that you’re actually supposed to take the pain medication that they prescribe to you, instead of just putting it next to your bed and hoping that it works by osmosis.
Oftentimes, I wonder how I’ve made it eighteen years without accidentally doing something to lose a limb, because I can sure be stupid. I took my Lortab, the pain medication that they gave me, and spent the next four days in a prescription medication-induced stupor.

So in the end, I have gained this wisdom to pass on to our children: one day not far from now, you WILL have to get your wisdom teeth taken out. And it will hurt. And you will learn nothing, other than the fact that life is pain.

That, my children, must be lesson enough.

And just for the record, you condescending nurse-lady, I totally remembered what we talked about, because I put it in the paper. Who’s laughing now?