Is This Real Life?

Somehow, I made it this far without anybody ever saying “Hey, at some point you should get y’r wisdom teeth removed sometime.” I guess it’s not the subject of everyday conversation, still, I wonder how everyone else seems to know so much about it. Is this the speech that my parents forgot? The one that comes after the birds and the bees?

Then this week came the pain… and the subsequent education on oral surgery and general anesthetics. Shortly before the surgery began, a nurse said to me “While your under, would you like any other teeth pulled?”. What an interesting question, I thought, as if he had just asked me if I wanted anything from the snack bar. The nurse then played me some PSA about wisdom teeth and I decided to get ’em all yanked out in one fell swoop.

This was my first time under general anesthetic and when I got home I decided to record a short video describing the experience. I remember comprehending people around me, but not being able to communicate very well myself. When I did, I mumbled about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason. Something to do with my dried tongue and the fact that turtles have particularly dry tongues as well.

Though no longer in my skull, I had “wisdom teeth” going through my head all day, so I made this watercolor tooth painting as part of the Kometen art competition in hopes that my tooth (or something like it) would end up as a random space object in their iPhone game.

Also, with all the dental stuff on my mind, I found some old BIC pen sketches I made from a doctor’s visit in 2007. See the sketches at top and on bottom of this posthole.