Toothache
has to be one of the most bizarre phenomenons of the human body. It serves no purpose, but to annoy the hell
out of you. If your heart starts to
hurt, call the paramedics you’re about to have a coronary. If your abdomen gives you pain, pull out your
copy of ‘Appendectomies for beginners’.
If your wrists start to throb and you’re feeling hot, think twice about
cheating on your girlfriend before letting her tie you to the bed and walk away
with a smug smile on her face and a box of matches in her hand. All of these pains are indicative of a life
threatening problem, but toothache? What
a bunch of crap.
In
fact the only grave warning toothache presents you with is that its time to
make a phone call, only not to your dentist as you might have first assumed, oh
no. The initial call you make is to your
bank manager checking that its ok to re-mortgage your house to meet the
gargantuan bill you will be presented with at the end of the gruelling two-hour
torture session you’re about to face.
I’m
pretty damn sure that if reincarnation exists then all dentists’ previous lives
were spent in dank dungeons fourteen floors under various medieval European
castles, burning heretics or getting people who didn’t care one way or the
other, to say Satan was a better shag than Christ and then burning them. I mean look at the facts. The dentist’s chair; stick a couple of manacles
on the arms and you’re pretty much in Torquemada territory. The tools; every item on that stainless steel
tray (suspiciously only wheeled into view after you’ve sat down) would have
been considered de rigueur at even the lowliest Spanish inquisition. The mask; just a more fashionable light
weight version of the more traditional black hood employed in the days before
central heating and the DQ (Dentists’ Quarterly) look for summer. Even the nurses wouldn’t seem out of place
with a hump, a limp, a shovel in one hand, a brain in the other and answering
to the name Igor with a somewhat rasping lisp.
Pure coincidence? You decide.
The
other thing I can’t figure out about dentists is after all that medical school
training why can’t they count? I swear,
If you’ve ever been to the dentist with a dodgy tooth, he will take on the air
of a troubled car mechanic, tutting, sucking his teeth and muttering things
like ‘If only you’d brought it in sooner’ or ‘Well your big ends gone, annit’
(what the hells a big end, and if its so bloody big, where could it go anyway?)
and the working professionals favourite ‘Its gonna cost ya’. You go in with one, single, solitary, lone
problem incisor and I guarantee you’ll leave with at least two gaps in your
smile, why? And if counting’s a problem
for them, then maths as a whole is just something that happens to other people,
but they must have a good handle on hypnotism.
How else can you explain the fact that if someone walked up to you in
the pub and punched you full in the face you’d probably get a tad upset, but if
a dentist goes at you with all manner of horrific looking tools for hours at a
time, putting you through not only physical pain, but also the kind of mental
anguish that has only before been seen in soldiers returning form the horrors
of war with post traumatic stress disorder, you give them a pained smile and
hand over the national debt of Bolivia.
It doesn’t make sense.
In
fact the only payback, I feel, is that being a dentist is not going to get you
very far in the love stakes, nobody would like the idea that every time you
open your mouth to kiss your date, they might whip out a small pair of pliers
and start tugging. I kind of figure for
pure sexual magnetism it’s got to be about on par with dating a gynaecologist. Anyway, they deserve it, so hah!
Why we
get toothache at all is, in itself, an enigma; some say it’s to redress the
balance between the good and sinful feelings associated with excess (bible
bashing tree huggers); some say the pains are code transmitted by the mother
ship telling us when its coming back (rambling lunatic conspiracy theorists);
some even go so far as to say it’s a build up of bacteria causing an infection
in, around or below the tooth, triggering a reaction in the nerve endings
within the gum letting our brain know a problem may have occurred (sad loser
virgin scientist bods). No, I am about
to reveal to you the real reason why we get toothache and I think you’ll be
amazed.
God
was pissed.
Yep,
that’s it I’m afraid, the almighty was out on the razzle the night before he
designed teeth. Although it’s not really
his fault, you see when the big man started out on the road to making all us
little people he had a plan and a schedule.
He started on the Monday and planned to have everything sorted by the
Friday, because there was a big leaving party happening (some of the angels
were planning on going to hell to join the Devils hoard, because they thought
God was a big boring hippy who likes everyone, but he didn’t mind so much, ‘cos
he’s a big boring hippy who likes everyone.).
Anyway, so the idea was that all the easy stuff (eyebrows, teeth,
bellybutton fluff etc.) should be left to the end of the week, and the more
time consuming stuff tackled early on, giving God a bit of a cushion on Friday
should things overrun. Now, the problem
is God got a bit caught up on Wednesday when he looked at his blueprints and
discovered someone had spilt their coffee on the bit about decision making and
he had a bit of trouble figuring out which part of the body should do
everything, the brain (hub of the body’s nervous system linking everything to
everything else via a complex structure of fibres and electrical pulses) or the
genitals (a strange component, he was sure the boys in design had thrown in for
a laugh). Not wanting to be laughed at
for asking for a bit of assistance (well it said for ages three to infinity on
the box) he just blagged it and guessed…oh well!
So
before he knew it Friday had come, the party was hours away and he wasn’t finished
yet, but being the conscientious deity that he is, instead of rushing it he
decided to come back to work on Saturday and complete the job properly, besides
he could use the overtime (that Sun thing was going to cost a fortune and he
was pretty sure he’d only be able to afford to run it for half a day at a
time.). So off he shuffled to shower,
stick on a new shroud and buy a case of Stella (he can afford champagne, but
likes to think he’s still one of the boys…oh yeah and he’s a tight git.).
Unfortunately,
when God arrived at the party he saw a cute little Angel he’d been trying to
get hold of for some time and started into the traditional male mating ritual
of getting absolutely out of his tree and dancing badly to various songs in the
vague direction of the target of his affection, mumbling all the words he
didn’t know, shouting all those he did, whilst simultaneously thinking ‘I’m
bloody gorgeous I am.’ (It’s not as easy as it looks girls.). Which is why the big lug found himself at his
work bench on Saturday morning, not knowing what went wrong, but remembering
enough to know the only blowing that occurred the night before was his chances
of ever getting off with the cute Angel and wondering why he ever invented
hangovers…oh yeah, he was drunk.
Anyway,
struggling through the haze of the night’s excesses, God completed the tasks at
hand. Just not exactly to the letter of
the instructions! This is why when the
blueprint called for eyebrows that would allow us to further express what we
say with a delicate raise or ripple; we end up with two caterpillars who, if
they’re not tamed, try to meet in the middle of our head for a quick shag. Bellybutton fluff that was due to be a
valuable source of nutrition for when we’re late for work and don’t have time
for breakfast, ended up becoming a never-ending hoard of blue mystery. And finally, to get back to the point, why
instead of having incredibly useful teeth that will continually replace
themselves, we ended up with a tooth ache, which is in fact the brain saying to
our gums ‘Come on they’re in there somewhere, push. Look, I’ve got the manual here and it states
quite clearly; all rotten teeth will be ejected and replaced by the gums. Look you’re not making it any easier on your
self…right that’s it IN MY OFFICE NOW!’
And that, my friends, is why we have toothache.
Whilst
we’re on the subject of unlikely mythological characters, what the hell are
tooth fairies all about? I mean, a tooth
falls out (or is wrenched unmercilously from our bleeding flesh, by sadistic
bastard dentists, hell bent on…Sorry…calm…calm.) and is placed under your
pillow to be taken by a small waif-like, girlie fairy in exchange for
cash. Is it just me or does that sound
strange to anyone else? Its like, how do
the little buggers lift your head, what do they want with the teeth, and where
do they get the cash anyway? You see if
I was told that tooth Schwarzeneggers were on the prowl that’d make more
sense. They’d easily be able to lift
your head to get at the tooth, they need the teeth to replace the one’s they
lose during filming their big action movies and they obviously get the cash
prostituting themselves to your mum, which is why she has a happy knowing smile
on her face when you bound down the stairs in the morning waving your cash,
before she whacks you round the face with a frying pan dislodging another
tooth, like the previous two mornings, ‘cos she bought a three pack of vanilla
chocolate fudge Jonnies and it’d be a shame to waste one. Tooth fairies, my left one!
Anyway,
I think one thing we can all agree on is that the biggest mystery concerning
toothache is why does it hurt so much?
It seems to me that the size of an injured body part relates inversely
to the amount of pain you experience.
For example, your leg is a big old lump of flesh, but if you’re unlucky
enough to receive a bit of a bash you just hop about a bit and it goes. However if you cut your little finger on a
piece of paper drawing insufficient blood to quench a vampiric field mouse’s
thirst, it hurts like mad and sends your body into spasm whilst little bubbling
sobs issue form your contorted mouth, and don’t get me started on a kick in the
bollocks! Why is it that one small chunk
of enamel coated calcium can cause you so much pain that you’d willingly cut
your own head off with a plastic spoon, just to stop the pain?
I’m
afraid even I don’t have the answer to that one. All I can do is offer you this sage piece of
advice. Put the plastic cutlery away,
take your self down the pub, get out of your mind drunk, walk up to a huge
group of lads, pick on the biggest most psycho looking lump there and say at
the top of your voice ‘Oi, Shrimp dick, I don’t take kindly to having cheques
bounced on me, so the next time you want a little butt luvin make sure you’ve
got cash.’ Then, upon finally being
discharged from intensive care, toddle off to your nearest ‘bastard’ dentist
and tell him you want a set of his finest false teeth made up, then leave his
office, middle finger extended, in the happy knowledge that you will no longer
require his services. No teeth no
toothache…QED.
It
worked for me.