Ouch

"You'll be a de-entist

(Be a dentist)

You have a talent for causing things pain

(PAIN!)

Son, be a de-entist

(Be a dentist)

People will pay you to be inhumane"

--Little Shop of Horrors

When did Alice in Chains become dentist-office music? We did find it more pleasing than muzak, but it hardly qualifies as soothing. And then, to hear the opening power-guitar of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Around the World" at the moment the dentist went in for the extraction--there was something positively Tarantino-esque about that.

Yes, the Solipsist had a couple of wisdom teeth pulled today. The anesthetic is just starting to wear off as he writes these words, so forgive him if he's more scattered than usual.

We are a bit old to be getting our wisdom teeth pulled, but we honestly never realized that you were supposed to. We thought wisdom teeth were like appendixes: You got them pulled if they were causing pain, not as a matter of course. A couple of weeks ago, though, our dentist told us that the teeth were, in fact, causing problems--minor infections and things--even though we couldn't really feel it. So out they had to come.

We never cease to be amazed at the power of anesthetics. You really don't feel a thing, despite the seriously disconcerting grinding and cracking sounds emanating from your mouth-al area.

Pondering the imminent extraction, we found ourselves marveling at the idea of "professional expertise." We couldn't figure out how a tooth extraction really worked--specifically an extraction of teeth that were fairly far back in the mouth and wedged in among other teeth. Was the dentist just going to go in and yank them out? What if he couldn't get the proper leverage? Would some major surgical intervention be required?

This is the kind of thing we think about: Will professional experts be able to do the task you have hired them for? About a year ago, we chipped our elbow. We were frantic. Would it heal properly? You know, an elbow! How do you put a cast on that? We were sure that this would stump any and all medical personnel: "You know, Mr. Solipsist," the astonished hospital administrator would say, "your elbow presents a medical conundrum so confounding that we have called in a specialist from Vienna to help us figure out a way to heal you. You have managed to chip your elbow in such a spot as no elbow has ever been chipped before in the annals of medical history!" Imagine our disappointment when the ER intern took a look at our chart, prescribed Vicodin, and passed us along to a nurse for bandaging.

Suffice to say our dentist was similarly unfazed by our wisdom teeth.

So now we sit, gauze in mouth, throbbing in jaw, pleased that we have survived our first major dental procedure (not counting six years of orthodonture). We imagine the possibility that, once the wound has healed, we will discover that the pulling of the wisdom teeth has, in some Marvel Comics-like way, somehow given us super powers--maybe the ability to chomp through steel, or to pick up radio signals from another dimension.

Whoa, the painkillers must be kicking in.