Extractions

Yesterday, I sat in the chair at the dentist office while he yanked two of my teeth out--numbers 1 and 32. I barely felt a thing, other than the initial shots to numb the area, and, of course, all the pulling and pushing that it took to get the teeth to release from my head.

It was far less traumatic than I had anticipated. I was sure that I would wake up in a coma--or, rather not wake up in a coma--or mangled, or left for dead, or something. I'm not really kidding, I do actually inflate things to this degree. I realize it's something I should work on.

Perhaps the most informative moment of the entire procedure was when the hygienist was hovering over me while the doctor stepped out to retrieve a "root tip extractor." I asked her: "How was that? Good? Bad?"

"That was just average," she said.