I personally had all of my wisdom teeth removed in one fell swoop several years ago when I first started college. In my case, the recovery from getting those pesky third molars out was not the worst possible experience.

However, I do keenly recall the impossibility of the all-liquid diet and choking down horse-sized pills (which up until that point I had never been able to successfully swallow with ease).

All these past feelings and discomforts were recently brought back to the forefront of my mind when a dear friend of mine had their wisdom teeth removed last Tuesday.

He, like myself and many others, has become aware of the excruciating pain of not being physically capable of gorging oneself with comfort foods post-operation. But, for those lucky few who don’t have wisdom teeth, you can disregard this article.

That being said, here’s a list of all the things I would rather do than be subjected to that egregious recovery process again.

1. Clip my cat’s claws (she’s a feisty one)

2. Delete the thousands of unread messages in my email

3. Exercise

4. Stub my toe, repeatedly

5. Get lemon juice and cayenne pepper in a paper cut

6. Lose the keys to my apartment during finals week

7. Pour the milk before the cereal

8. Learn how to file my own taxes

9. Unexpectedly slam my hips against the countertop while walking through the kitchen

10. Run into someone you never talk to anymore

11. Use Internet Explorer as my primary Web App

12. Go to office hours

13. Drink 2 liters of water every day for the rest of my life

14. Get a tattoo of an egg on my face

15. Get salmonella (but not from the egg tattoo, from a real egg)

16. Talk to literally any stranger about politics

17. Never shave my legs again (although this is kind of a win-win)

18. Go sky-diving without a parachute

19. Intentionally burn a soufflé

20. Have my car towed

21. Eat the hottest pepper known to man without a glass of milk handy

22. Get my fingers stuck in the bathroom stall door (speaking from experience, this is unpleasant)

23. Become an oral surgeon and inflict the pain I want so desperately to avoid on others

OK, so the last one is probably the most accurate because I would like to become a dentist in the (hopefully not so) distant future. Otherwise, these have been the things I would rather do than recover from wisdom teeth removal.