Dentist, Wisdom Teeth, and the English

Stick with this. It gets better.

Dentists and Men
I don't know why it is that men hate going to the doctor or the dentist. Maybe someone with more psychobabble than me can answer that, but I'm one of them, and barely grown out of the childish phase of being nagged to make an appointment, dragged to the appointment and feeling like I should have month of sweeities as a treat for going at all.

Well, a second language does nothing to make these prospects easier. The specific prospect in question was having my wisdom teeth removed.

Wisdom
Why didn't you have them out at 18, I keep being asked, like everyone else we know? Which brings up an issue I thought I'd buried but turns out I'm still quite touchy about, so I reply, tetchily, a la Kevin the Teenager.

- Because I didn't have any wisdom teeth at 18, ok? I looked about 12 with voice to match. Happy now?

The Saga
So begins the saga to remove my four wisdom teeth: mis quatros muellos de huisio.

Appointment 1: Getting to Base Camp
Right side, top and bottom, dos muellos, assured that it wouldn't be too painful.

I sit down, meet the odontologo, who spots my foreignness. Standard ice breaker begins:
- Where you from?
- Scotland.
- Ah, you're not from England?
- No, I smile, nada que ver.
- Ah... he says to himself... not from England... still muttering... from Scotland. In that case, we can use an anesthetic.

Good line. Wasn't painful, sounded horrific, out in 10 mins, job done.

Appontment 2: A Day Hike. 2 weeks later.
As above, left hand side, top, one, 5 mins, easy peasy. What's all the fuss? Men are weak.

Appointment 3: Everest. 3 weeks later.
Tooth 4, known to me as Hidden Everest, was a trickier business. An impeached molar, reluctantly within the gum, rotated 90 degrees as if it had turned towards the cheeky, and decided it was going to leave my gob sideways, not up, like everyone else's wisdom teeth.

After Appointment 2, I'd been told I had to go and buy Celestone and that I was to apply it myself one hour before my 6pm appointment.

So, at 5pm I headed to the farmacia, asked for Celestone.
Fine, they said. Do you want to have us apply that here?
No thanks, I said. And added, proudly. I am going to apply it myself.
The look on the woman's face was somewhere between bemused and plain old amused. It also said, You do not know what celestone is, do you, foreign boy?

Rather than reply, she opened the box, removed the celestone from its packaging and placed on the counter a syringe with an inch long needle.

- So, she said, are you really going to stick this in your own ass?

It's hard to describe how many people in the queue hit the floor laughing, or how hard they laughed.


- Is there... someone... here that could 'apply'... that? Foreign boy replies, sheepishly.
- I'll call the nurse.

It turns out I had misunderstood the meaning of you need to apply it yourself before the appointment. This did not mean I had to apply it so much as I need to 'get it done'.
Had the verb INJECT ever come up, that would have solved a lot of confusion.

So, a sore ass full of celestone, a taxi ride to the odontologia, an hour and twenty minutes of wrenching around in mi boca, and I am finally the appropriate number of wisdoms short of a full mouth of teeth.

Enough.