America's Next Top Model
Hello, everybody. Today is my second full day without Vicodin, and my first full week without my bottom two wisdom teeth. (The surgeon decided, after slicing my upper gums, that the teeth there could and should stay put, leading me to ask, what did he see in there that wasn't on the x-ray that changed his mind? Did my upper teeth have protection from the Insane Popes?)
As my legions of readers know, I was excited to realize my life-long dream of being put under general anesthesia; I’m happy to report that I was not disappointed.
I was led into the operating room – a tiny, square space, entirely colored in the lightest shade of grey and almost exactly what I picture when I contemplate what Hell might look like, though without the constant re-looping of “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” piped in, which I have decided will be the soundtrack to my eternal damnation.
I relaxed back into the chair and the surgeon and his nurse went to work prepping the scene. I stared at the fluorescent lighting, noting that sticker tags were still inside the fixtures, which struck me – I imagined that, if I were to have an office building of my very own, I wouldn’t want ugly manufacturing stickers glued willy-nilly over my establishment. Did these practitioners of dental artistry have no pride? Or were they so focused on peering into dark depths of mucosal tissue and alveolar bones that they never thought to cast their gaze upwards into the blinding brilliance of tubes of excited mercury vapor that adorned their ceiling and lit their paths? I mean, you guys – kind of tacky, okay?
