My tooth hurts. It's not a constant demanding pain that demands attention like stubbing your toe or taking a mail box to the crotch. It's more of a slow annoying pain, the kind that never goes away, but never gets bad enough that you can complain about it without sounding like a total wienie.
It's kinda like working in an office.
I'm no stranger to mouth pain. I went through the torture of having braces in Jr High which was basically two years of constant mouth pain and soft food. Then in my freshman year at college, I had my wisdom teeth taken out by a man that I once watched cut a tick out of my friend's butt with a scalpel. So I can handle a little moral ache.
I'm pretty sure it's just simple cavity and a simple trip to the dentist would have the whole filled with metal and me filled with pain killer and happy gas and my problems would be solved.
However, just like my issues with body oder, knowing how to fix a problem doesn't mean I want to do it.
Now before you go accusing me of having such a common and down right boring neurosis like a fear dentists let me explain myself. Unlike the millions of Americans who fear dentists and all their needles, drills and long, pointy metal tooth pointers for absolutely no good reason, I have three firm, realistic and sane reasons to not want to got to fix this problem.
First: Dentists are doctors. Doctors are for wusses.
Despite 25 years of evidence to the contrary, I have still managed to convince myself that I am a strong and manly individual. I could have been a crusader, marching across the known world to face death at the hands of heathens, blistering sun and sand in uncomfortable places. I could have been a mountain man, living alone in the woods for years with nothing but my gun and my beard for companionship.
Instead, I am a software developer.
I think the most dangerous thing I did this week was tell a coworker the break room soda machine was out of diet Mountain Dew.
Since I was cursed to be born in the 20th century, I have to find other things in my life, bare them with patience and tell myself that makes me tough.
Right now, I'm wearing this toothache as a badge of pride.
Second: I cannot shame my family.
My grandfather was a dentist. He was more then a dentist though, he was like a dentist character in a cartoon. Everything at his house revolved around teeth. I grew up reading dental propaganda in the form of children's books. I played with a Play-doh set where you made teeth, stuck them into this creepy plastic head and then yanked them out. They had me so brain washed, I really though that an apple was as good as a candy bar.
We were a family who brushed. We were a family who used mouth wash. We were not a family that flossed, but we always told grandpa we did when we went for a visit. Seriously, nobody flosses.
I still remember when I got my first cavity. I was in high school so I had driven myself to and from the dentists office (this was in Idaho, where apparently you're allowed to drive under the influence of medical painkillers). I still remember the look of disappointment I saw in my mother's face when I explained why I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth.
I never want to see that look again.
Third: Popcorn is awesome right now.
The cavity is right in between my two back teeth, which is normally the kind of place that popcorn kernels like to hang out for weeks, making me consider suicide. Now, the whole is big enough that any remains of the delicious movie treat can be easily removed.
It seriously a dream come true for me.
Fortunately for me, I'm married and my wife is used to me. She's got me an appointment for next week to get this taken care of, so I guess that's that.
Geek on.
