HOW DO YOU DO?

How do you do ... wisdom teeth

"Argh, owwh, mnmm, waaaaorr, ntss, orr, a, a, a, geee, iiioouu, fuufuu!" This is often the greeting you give to your new gum-piercing wisdom teeth.  Welcome to pain, wisdom pending.

So, having evolved opposable thumbs, the ability to be annoyingly tall or dwarfishly small, or neither. Awfully perfect symmetry, A-symmetry, webbed hands and feet, tails and the creation and destruction of the freakshow industry. We've been left with four redundant teeth deciding to invade the delicate and harmonious balance of our mouths for the purpose of what?

War.

It's not like anyone was, by 22, having trouble doing the chewing. "His meat just kept falling off the back of his teeth unchewed. He tried chew guards, getting someone to pre-chew his food for him, even installing a robotic chin strap but alas, he remained a chugalug."

Until, one day, as if a miracle like fluke was bestowed upon him, four large teeth came bursting through his gums almost identical to the ones he already got. No training, he thought. And soon, (if soon was measured in years) he was able to use these miracle teeth.  And did he chew? He didn't stop. He chewed through wire, time, even his own mouth, waiting momentarily for scabbing, and then back on to chewtown.  So satisfied he went out into the street shouting. "Low behold my new completely  necessary extra teeth!" And the populous of the part of the street where he was lowing and beholding on, did wish and were granted them too. And forever they were known as wise Dom's teeth. 


Over time and the amalgamating craze of 1853 they became known as simply wisdom teeth.

Wisdom is a beautiful thing an enlightening and beguiling trait. It is gained through knowledge of experience and a digestion of those experiences as edifying and useful lessons, it is not teeth, it is not molar teeth, it is not measured in teeth or can be found in teeth. It is found above the teeth, in the brain. Quite why someone with a brain decided to call these teeth wisdom is beyond me if he or she had to go through the process of acquiring them. If they had, then maybe I could suggest more appropriate names: 

•  E-bar ech as like?! 

• Oh God noooo 

• ARGH GEZZ FUCKIN ARGHHH! 

• Get out of my mouths. 

• Bastard! 

•  Why, oh the shit why?

People who don't have problems with wisdom teeth exist. These completely lovely people at inopportune times tell tales of when 'they too' had their wisdom teeth and how 'utterly painless' it was.


"I don't know why you're complaining, when I went to the dentist and he said he could just pull them out and I said yes and it was all over in a 'jiffee.' Here have a paracetamol."

"I need crack!"

So now you’ve finally got them. You're 45 and they’re here, whoopie do, but wait, you’re teeth have moved, that lovely smile you had looks like Stonehenge after a tornado. People do those looks of shock masked inside disgust whenever you even half smile. So for the remaining 27 years of your life you become the moody mute.

It's a hard life, whenever people ask, ‘what's wrong?’ You just look back attempting to express sadness at the sentence human tactlessness has served on your own genetic casualty.

I have a friend and he has a kinda neurosis about teeth, fears, nightmares, a general sense of unease about the elemental idea of teeth, and he's not alone.  I'm surprised there aren't people who fear their lungs, kidneys or brain and any other such organ could fail or be unreliant, or is even there? There could be great legions of the human race in perpetual paranoia.  Bathed in information and mis-information, diagrams and distress. 

Maybe I just haven't got the patience, a high pain threshold or a good dentist.

I don't mind dentists, people seem to recoil at the very idea of their existence. I think doctors or policemen should be feared more. They have the potential to accidently kill you or in the case of the police, kill you. The worst a dentist could do is not fix something properly or cause you pain while performing said procedure. Why even entertain that just do like my granny and thousands of others did, healthy or rotten get them all pulled out at 25 and receive a brand new set of sparkling dentures. No more brushing, no more dentist, you're fully furnished.