A Wiseguy Loses His Wisdom Teeth
A Tale from the Genie in the Nitrous Tank
Did I ever tell you about the time I had several wisdom teeth removed (to my wisdom’s deficit) by my one-eyed oral surgeon, whom I paranoidly thought was REALLY OUT TO GET ME? I thought not. Hitch up your horse and settle in — it’s a terrifying tale.
Picture a naive college lad who had the jawbone of an ass, but no Samson strength. That’s my way of saying that I had a painfully braying jaw: three wisdom teeth at odds with optimum alignment, all clamoring to make hay with my thousand-dollar smile. The fourth fellow in the mix had been eradicated long ago — a little matter of an abscess that had me hitting eleven on the flaming pain scale. But I digress.
Being new in my Sonoma County town, I sought the referral advice of a venerable sage: one of my drinking buddies, who appeared to have all of his teeth. The dentist he referred me to referred me in turn to a local oral surgeon, Dr. Caliban (name changed to protect the guilty). Through some means of expensive trickery, the good doctor had managed to make his office look clean and respectable; i.e., I could smell no corpses in the waiting room.
I was brought in by his perky assistant, whose highly caffeinated manner I mistook for her unbridled enthusiasm for the tooth trade. Little did I know she would be part of the…
