Toothless

They are after me again. The dentists. Toward the holiday season they tend to get restless, as the yearly quota for oral surgery referrals draws near, and they realize they are a few kills short of a trophy. When I go in for my cleanings, they stare in silent rage at my complete set of 32 teeth, an affront to their profession, and they vow to take me down.

"You realize that your wisdom teeth are connected directly to your brain stem, and one infection will cause brain death within the hour," goes the typical, sponteneous lecture, at the conclusion of another uneventful exam.

"But," I ask. "Are they infected?"

"Well, no." Angry sigh.

"Are they impacted?"

"Um, well, they are not, they are, arrg. No."

"I think I'll skip it," I say.

"You do realize," they threaten. "that for every six months you keep these wisdom teeth, 10 Ethiopian children will die? Are you really that selfish?"

"But," I say. "I knew this woman who was in the hospital for weird complications from an extraction, and her skin came off in sheets. They documented it in a medical journal." This is a true story.

"Lies!" The dentist screams. "My son had his wisdom teeth out last year, and he won Powerball the next day!"

"But there's nothing wrong with my teeth."

"They are WISDOM TEETH!" The doctor then proceeds to regale me with stories of my inevitable facial bone loss and lonely death in a nursing home for dental renegades.

The strange part is, no two dentists seem to agree about what exactly is wrong. One dentist claimed there were cavities. One claimed they came in sideways. However, no dentist seems to be able to corroborate the findings of any other. But they all agree on one point: I need surgery to have them yanked out of my face.

Mofo's, the teeth stay.