One of my wisdom teeth is growing in. I've been trying to avoid it, but either my wisdom teeth are coming in or the apocalypse has arrived in the upper right-hand corner of my mouth. Now there's growing up to be done, and I'm not sure I'm the man for the job.
My teeth and I have always been adversaries. As a toddler, I sucked my thumb, so my teeth retaliated by growing in crooked. For the three years I had braces, my teeth tortured me, so I paid them back by eating my weight in Sour Patch Kids. Our war waged on for 17 years.
But some time before college, I gained dominance over my teeth. I would hold floss in front of them without actually flossing just to tease them. I started picking drunken bar fights, making my teeth scared that they would be knocked out by an angry football player. I even told my parents that instead of paying out-of-state tuition for me to go to college, they could just buy me 875,000 Gobstoppers.
And all the while, there was no comeback from my teeth. But somewhere in that time, I seem to have made my teeth mad. And now they're back to fight.
It all started some time last week. There was no sudden pain or hunching over in agony. There was just a subtle feeling that came to me over the course of the day. I'm no doctor, but at the time, I could pretty safely diagnose the pain as a rusty, banged-up Volkswagen ripping its way through my gums. My friends disagreed, saying that they had had similar experiences with their wisdom teeth, but rather few with Volkswagens. This would require the counsel of an actual professional. That could be a problem.
My relationship with medical professionals has been strained over the past couple of years. This is because I'm finally getting too old to see the doctors and dentists I saw as a child. I only stopped seeing my pediatrician a couple of years ago, after he gave me my first hernia exam. Hernia exams are awkward for everyone, but it's particularly bad when a man grabs you by your most sensitive handful, tells you to cough, and then hands you a lollipop and tells you to say hi to your mother for him.
Visiting my childhood dentist has gotten weird, too. The other kids in the waiting room look at me funny when I play on the jungle gym and read \Berenstein Bears"" books before my appointment. Still, I trust my dentist and I like getting to feel really tall once every six months. But the jungle gym, the encouragingly short children and the trusty dentist of my youth are all back in New York.
Perhaps there's symbolism in all this. Maybe being forced to leave my childhood dentist behind is a parable for leaving my childhood behind. Or maybe eating nothing but soup and overcooked pasta has left me thinking in asinine metaphors. Either way, there are still upsides to the ailment. There's nothing like a toothache to distract you from the blinding agony of studying food science. And maybe the experience will make me better about addressing problems as they come.
But with me, the safe money's never on growing up. A return to Gobstoppers and Sour Patch Kids is a much safer bet.
amosap@hotmail.com.
