Wisdom teeth are so called because they come so late in life. The term probably comes from the time when to be twenty-five was to be oldest bastard in the tribe. Back in the days before regular flossing and brushing, wisdom teeth came in handy in case your others rotted away. Nowadays, not so useful. Mine were coming in impacted, which in this case means my wisdom teeth were coming in sideways towards my back molars. They would keep me up at night, not with pain, but with a pressure against my back teeth.
The dentist decided to remove all my wisdom teeth at the same time, which meant putting me under. Partway through I woke up. I was still numb but I could feel people touching my mouth and I could hear them. There was a white paper sheet over my face and a bright lamp pointed right at me. The team of dentists working on me looked like shapeless white blobs and I was so zonked out I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Then the thought struck me. This has to be how alien abduction stories began. Bright lights, unable to move, people probing you, unintelligible language…it all adds up. Some yokel out in Devil’s Rectum, Middle O’ Nowhere gets drunk out in the woods, passes out and then has flashbacks of having his wisdom teeth pulled out. Eventually it becomes local lore, and then national, and then the X-Files comes along and elevates it to cultural phenomenon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
WORD!
Post a Comment