Having one’s wisdom teeth removed is a sort of rite of passage. It’s something that most people in our society will go through at some point. One feature a lot of these rite (be they weddings or college graduations) is that they aren’t particularly interesting to people who haven’t gone through the process, but to those who are about to perform the rite or have performed the rite, any and all stories of the rite are engrossing.
I think there should be a website that just collects stories about people’s wisdom tooth extraction. (There do appear to be individual stories on different blogs, but no compendium appears to exist.)
I had three of my four wisdom teeth removed a little over a year ago. I just discovered some notes I wrote to my wife in the few hours after the operation, before I could talk with any comfort. Alas, this text can’t quite convey the charm of the handwritten words — clearly written with both careful concentration and sloppy through the recovering fog of drugs – and penned the back of a doctor’s prescription note.
“I totally can’t feel my tongue.”
“I have teeth”
“Can you ask about the sneezing thing?”
“There’s something about how I’m supposed to sneeze.”
“I think it’s on their website.”
“So … they only took out the left ones?”
“We’ve got new prescriptions?”
“Can you ask when I should come in or the other side?” (Yes, depite the progression toward clearer thought, I forgot the f in for.)
“When it hurts?”
“Some other time?”
This reminds me: I should make an appointment to have my last wisdom tooth removed.
