I had a wisdom tooth pulled a few days ago. It was impacted, slightly jutting out at the back of my mouth. My dentist has been bugging me about it for years.
“You should really get that extracted.” “Yeah? Or what?” “Or your head will rot off.”

Let it rot, I thought. I didn’t want anyone cutting stuff out of the back of my mouth. Pain and blood and me screaming like a white woman in church. It’s been sitting back there for years, bothering no one, especially me. It actually made me feel kind of special. Most people brag about how they had four wisdom teeth. I had six! How brainy does that make me? Suck on that, Stephen Hawking! One tooth chose to stay embedded deep within the recesses of my apparently gargantuan pie-hole. The other decided to peek out at the world and cause my dentist to become hideously apoplectic.

I haven’t always seen this same dentist. For years I saw one guy. He took care of me since I still had my baby teeth. But years ago, he decided to retire and pass his business on to some holy rolling, man-hating busybody. She liked to prod around my mouth while talking about her divorce and asking me if I was in fact seeing anyone. Are you kidding? The proverbial back breaking straw came when she asked what church I attended. Like a dumbass, I said, “I…don’t go to church”. At that moment, I swear her eyes went red and I could feel my bowels shift. I spent the rest of the visit watching smoke billow from my mouth like a small brush fire, wondering if I was going to walk out of that place looking like Jaws from Moonraker. After that, I had to go to the ATM to get money for my bill because as she stated when I pulled out my Visa, “Now you know we don’t got no credit card machine.” No, I….didn’t know that. I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware that my bill would have to be paid off in wampum. I thought this was the 21st century where dentist offices took plastic and educated doctors didn’t speak in double negatives. My bad. I hope your ex-husband, wherever he is, is still running.

Anyway, I mentioned the previous dentists because they always saw the extra wisdom tooth peering out but never mentioned the fact that, in time, my head could in fact rot off. So, either my new dentist is full of shit or my old dentists were too busy thinking about nursing homes and restraining orders to care. Who knows?.

All I know is I have a hole in the back of my mouth that has become an annoying food trap. It’s disgusting. The other night I was able to scoop out some beef with my tongue. Only, I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten beef. It’s all very disconcerting. And it still hurts.

I’m sure my head would have indeed rotted off in twenty or so years, but damn, I miss that little hunk of tooth. Feels like a little piece of me is missing. It also feels like I don’t got no more wisdom. Maybe I should go into dentistry.