Forty years ago, while my dad still had his wisdom teeth, he sat in a chair in a doctor’s office and made a decision. He would accept the anesthesia but evade its effects -- he would stay awake throughout the procedure. My dad chuckled when the doctor told him to count down from ten. If only the doctor knew what Ronnie had up his sleeve, if only the doctor understood the force of Ronnie’s willpower. With a quiet and knowing smirk of mockery, he counted in his head, “Ten, nine, eight...” and woke up in the passenger seat of his mother’s car.
Where did the time go? Despite his best intention, my dad slipped out of reality for an hour of his life. The only people able to account for his physical well-being during this time are a select group of doctors. Mentally, there are no records of his whereabouts.
My dad’s is not a unique story -- each year, millions of young adults phase out for an hour while up to four potentially hazardous growths are wrenched from the dark grottos of their mouths. Where do the extracted teeth go? Why do they exist in the first place?
I had my turn in the hot seat earlier this week, and these were the questions that colored my experience. I asked my questions and the doctors explained that before wisdom teeth started being removed, they caused dental infections and diseases, and could be fatal. This made sense, but even so, I could not escape an overwhelming sense that the elaborate and involved removal process is a cover for a darker, more brooding operation.
I can point to two sources for this intuition; one, childhood folklore vilifies power tools in the dentistry industry, and two, the constant stream of soothing but eerily attentive small talk that happened in that room made me feel like there was an elephant in the room, and no one was acknowledging it! This elephant would be the conspiracy.
Mostly, though, I felt calm, and at some point (I don’t remember the exact moment) this calm turned into a slew of imagined experiences. As I wove between imagined worlds and the real world, I caught glimpses of my mom and the nurses in the room and wanted them to understand where I was. But as soon as I started searching for words, I was back in the room again. With nothing to grasp at, I stopped trying and floated off again.
This “floating” characterized much of my next few days. When 8 o'clock rolled around on day one, I lay down in my bed and turned on a playlist crafted for me by a loved one. For the next four hours, I lay on my back, comforted by the sturdy caress of a weighty blanket, stiff mattress, and string of memory-rich melodies. All of my physical needs fully met, my mind had full freedom to wander.
A few times, I felt the compulsion to write down what I was thinking, to record this chapter of my experience. But, just like what happened in the removal room, as soon as I started grasping for words, the organic impulses of the mind were disrupted. Suddenly, my mental pen had no ink. These thoughts could not be tamed; this chaos could not be recorded.
We have few or no questions about the physiological aspects of the wisdom tooth removal experience. The teeth need to be removed to avoid crowding and pain, and painkilling drugs create mind chaos for patients. It is an odd experience, but explainable. However, the symbolic and literary aspects of the wisdom tooth narrative need to be fleshed out. As a culture, we need to decide what these teeth represent. Does the tooth itself indicate the presence of wisdom, or is it the removal of the tooth that enables wisdom's oncoming? Less important, is the aforementioned conspiracy theory something that we as a society want to devote attention to?
Ug, time for another painkiller.
