Musings Of A Muddled Male

A Short Jerk

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

        Ann and I rarely go to have dental work done separately.  Not because we are afraid of our dentist and feel a need to protect each other, but because we try to combine multiple visits to Logan into one trip down the canyon as a way of saving gas plus wear and tear on the car.  Besides, I’ve got your bicuspid doesn’t seem to have the same ring as I’ve got your back.  Truth be known, however, combining my dental trip with Ann’s dental trip doesn’t provide me any protection from the dentist anyway because Ann, my wife, immediately gets our dentist to join forces with her in trying to prevent me from consuming my elixir of life, carbonated drinks, French fries and M & M Peanuts.  You ask how I know.  Because our dentist’s office has each dental chair separated from the next chair by a three-quarter wall which allows me to hear Ann weaving her magic in the next chair as she busily goes about convincing the dentist that saving me from myself is a purely humanitarian act.

        A visit to our dentist last week involved replacement of a crown for Ann, worse for me because it appeared that I had an infected wisdom tooth.  When I was eighteen I was in Army basic training in Fort Ord, California.  While there I had some problems with a wisdom tooth and they sent me to the infirmary.  The dentist’s diagnosis was that I had an infected wisdom tooth on the left side, so they might as well pull both the upper and lower wisdom teeth on that side.  After six shots of Novocain my jaw still wasn’t dead and any attempt to pull either tooth resulted in instant pain.  After some discussion the dentist said, “I don’t have time for this, hang onto the chair arms while I get these teeth out.”  I did and he did.  That memory was lodged in my mind when our current dentist said a week ago, “You have an infected wisdom tooth and it would probably be best if it was pulled,” gave me two shots of anesthetic, and went back to working on Ann while waiting for the shots to deaden my jaw enough to let him pull the tooth.

        The time came and I opened my mouth wide enough to insert an assortment of tools, three hands and an evacuator.  The dentist bent the tooth back and forth a couple of times to loosen it and then a short jerk and out it came.  Two minutes flat, no pain, no swelling, and very little bleeding afterward.  Ann, who I thought would be pleased that everything went so well, was obviously disappointed that I didn’t have any pain.  My sister, who claims that I was mean to her when we were kids, was also disappointed that there was no pain.  And Ann, who had always claimed that I was only half as smart as I said I was because I was missing two of my four wisdom teeth, was now saying that because I only had one of four wisdom teeth left I was only a fourth as smart as I said I was.

        The thing that troubles me the most, however, is that when I told Ann the title I would be using for this column and she approved, I was describing the extraction.  I am beginning to worry that Ann may have approved because she assumed that I was describing me.