Levy Out: My Spurs Pain
I had my wisdom tooth taken out last week. I had a conversation with it. A football one.
You've been with me for as long as I care to remember. After yet another night of twisted dreams and unconscious gum chewing, you're there when my eyes blearily unstick. As the sunlight hits my retinas, a rush of pain shoots down my spine and swings back up again, pounding my brain. I know that it'll be there for the rest of the day unless I numb it immediately with narcotics. You do this to me. My wisdom tooth. The wisdom tooth I call Levy.
Who decided to call this intruder 'wise' anyway? Isn't it one of those ancient lies we continue to tell ourselves in order to find some upside to misfortune? Like when we accidently push our trainers down into the squidgy oomska of dog faeces. It's lucky, we tell anyone in the near vicinity who's not really listening. Then again, it's famously also lucky for Spurs when the year ends in a one but I haven't seen much evidence of that so far this century.
How wise exactly are you, Levy? You sit there at the back of my lower gum, bursting through the surface by stealth, inflicting intermittent but excruciating pain on me. You tell me it's for my own good as you stubbornly hold out for more time. I've seen how you've sacrificed some of my gleaming lilywhite teeth, one luminescent one in particular, and forced me to accept synthetic artifice in their place. Seven replacements to fill the gaps you created. Seven. I can feel how brittle they are every time I run my tongue over them. One little push and they stand a very good chance of being dislodged at the root. You're not wise at all, are you Levy. You're a parasite. I can't think straight now because of you. I can't smile because of you and I require another packet of ibuprofen to numb myself from this incessant throb. From the pain that you cause me, Levy. You, yes, you.
I often wonder why you exist. My dentist tells me you're thought to be some kind of evolutionary hanger-on. You're not meant to be here now that we have proper functioning and developed canines, incisors and molars. We have a system in place to take apart what we chew. Some might call it a long-term plan. We don't need you anymore. We should be just fine without you, if we could just make the genetic leap and dispense with you entirely. I've read case studies in which your kind have been definitively removed. Catalan teeth for instance, are known to grow freely without interference. As are teeth
