but leave the Wise to wrangle

Having One's Wisdom Teeth Removed: A Meditation.

• I should have had this done when I was 18. Then the whole bloody thing would be way in the past and I wouldn't have to be suffering through it now.
• Having a dentist plus assistant forcibly wrench three teeth from one's jaw leaves one feeling as though someone has just forcibly wrenched several teeth from one's jaw. Odd, that.
• Myprodol helps. Six episodes of Angel are also definitely a distraction. Lindsay is still cute, even when I'm stoned and in pain and he's beating Angel to a bloody pulp with a sledgehammer.
• The mirror assures me that I'm actually not that swollen, but I still feel as though, in the words of the poet, from my face my giant chin sticks out just like a violin.
• Contrary to all logic, the back end of one's jaw is apparently used when blowing one's nose. It currently hurts like hell, anyway.
• Sod's Law dictates that the three post-operative hours during which one drools and slurs like a drunk will be the time when five separate people ring the doorbell repeatedly and won't go away when ignored. Two beggars, the water-metre-reading men, someone wanting to cart away our rubble, and the delivery of wood for the Army of Reconstruction's next phase. Twice.
• Apparently it was a fairly routine removal and didn't offer any particular problems, except that I apparently have a very small mouth. Who'da thunk? It was also, in fact, not as nightmarish an experience as I expected; this is, I can attest, the Ideal Dentist. Conversely, I wasn't expecting this degree of post-operative pain.
• The good cheer with which the dentist's assistant offers to give you the blood-stained teeth as a trophy of the experience is, frankly, perverse.

Going to sleep now. Apparently I can expect bloodstained drool on the pillow.