The Yanks Are Coming -- or what do wisdom teeth have to do with wisdom?

[Snowden]

The Yanks Are Coming
By Greg Crosby

The next time I write this column something will be missing. Actually two things will be missing. After tomorrow I will no longer be whole. Tomorrow I'm having my upper and lower wisdom teeth removed on the right side. At 8:A.M. they are scheduled to be pulled out of my head by their roots. Yes, the yanks are coming, most definitely. And am I having a traumatic time over this thing? You bet your eye teeth I am.

There are a couple of reasons why this thing is troubling me so much, besides just the very idea of having one's teeth pulled out. One thing that bothers me is the fact that these teeth have been with me for most of my life. That's over 50 years or so - a long relationship by any measure. I've gotten quite attached to the little guys back there. We've chewed a lot of fat together. They've been with me through thick and thin, feast and famine, sweet and sour, hot and cold. And they've never let me down - chewing up everything I threw at them.

The other reason that I'm particularly bothered by this is the fact that these two teeth just happen to be in great shape! No cavities, no fillings, they're perfect. The problem is, the gum is receding away from the tooth, and because of that, food particles can get lodged and cause infection. It's like the old joke, "Your teeth are fine, but those gums have to be removed." So my man Manny the dentist says those teeth have got to go. Out, out, damn tooth. Or rather teeth.

It's funny what thoughts go through my mind at times like this. I wondered whether the removal of those two big back teeth on the right side would throw my whole face out of whack. There're pretty big teeth, after all, so maybe the lack of that weight on one side will set me off balance or something - like make my head list to the right. That would be pretty weird looking.

What if taking those teeth out will cause my jaw to sag or look like it's caved in on one side? Maybe I should have had all four wisdom teeth pulled so that both sides of my face will match. And what will this do to my speech? Will I sound like Walter Brennan when he played those moronic outlaws without his teeth? Or will I only sound like him on one side of my mouth?

I've had those two back teeth all my life and I know I'm going to miss them. My tongue will grope longingly for them, searching, searching in vain for its little friends, the wisdom teeth twins. But they will be gone, gone forever. And my poor, stupid tongue won't understand. Like in Bambi when his father, the stag, told him, "Your mother can't be with you anymore," my tongue will just have to live with the fact that those two teeth can't be with him anymore, either. Isn't this a sad story?

Manny won't be performing the honors; he referred me to a special dentist that will be doing this. A guy who specializes in tearing the teeth out of people's heads. He's a dentist who specializes in oral and maxillofacial surgery, to be precise. And the best part, I'm going to be out cold, knocked out completely. That's exactly the way I want it - I don't want to know from nothin' during this procedure. Sit down, go to sleep, wake up, go home. That's it.

The funny thing is I was supposed to have had this done a week ago. I went into the office right on time, filled out all the necessary and unnecessary paperwork, sat and waited a few minutes until I was ushered into the little room with the uncomfortable little chair. The dentist came in, introduced himself, asked me a gang of questions, then left. Soon the assistant came in and put the smock around my neck and said, "So, you haven't eaten in the last 6 hours, right?"

"Wrong," I said. "I had lunch." The assistant said, "Uh, oh," or something close to that, then excused herself from the room. Soon the dentist came back and told me that they couldn't perform the extraction that day because I wasn't supposed to eat for at least 6 hours. Nobody had told me that beforehand. So home I went.
Now I'm due to have the procedure first thing in the morning, and there shouldn't be any further delays with this thing. But you never know. If for any reason things don't go as planned, I will certainly let you all know about it. Yes, dear readers, you will be the first to know. Well, actually, my tongue will be the first to know, you will be second.



A final thought. If I have my wisdom teeth removed will I start thinking like a liberal Democrat?
JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. A freelance writer in Southern California..


Greg Crosby

[Woodmonkey]

I lost mine a long time ago. They didn't put me to sleep even though they wound up chiseling them out of bone - I wish they had.

[conlor]

It just goes to show that we can have our wisdom teeth moved and still think logically, like Republicans.