I had my wisdom teeth pulled last July, which ended up being a pretty interesting experience…mainly because of the nitrous oxide. I was pretty lucky in that they were able to be popped out with relative ease, and no collateral surgery was required. So the nice dental surgeon was good enough to keep all my extracted wisdom teeth largely intact, and they even threw them in a Ziploc bag for me to take home. Which I thought was awesome, because I had these grand designs to string them into a necklace to wear…because there’s just something insane and psychotic about owning a necklace made from your own teeth that appeals to me.

The thing with dental surgery (…or any type of surgery, I guess) is that you need to be drugged, and so I had to arrange for my brother to come pick me up in my car when I was done – they won’t even let anyone walk out of the office unaccompanied. Which I would discover that day to be a wise policy to endorse…because I was drugged out of my MIND. So that’s why I’m scared of ever drinking to excess, because I guess I’m one of those guys that don’t acknowledge that they’re really incapacitated when they’re actually really incapacitated. I vaguely remember pushing everyone away and going “I’M COOL, I’M COOL – let me walk down these stairs myself!” while I had lost all sense of balance, had like one eye closed, and drool was pouring out of my numb, tranquilized mouth.

Unfortunately, at some point between when they handed me a bag of my own teeth and when I stumbled home…I lost the bag. I’ve always just assumed that I dropped it in the office or the parking lot while I was stumbling out, and due to the fact that I was so drugged out and my memory of the whole day was so hazy…I just never paid it any mind again.

So we fast forward to this morning, fifteen months afterwards. I’m at the subway station, sitting in my car, plugging my iPod into my ears, clipping my access card onto my belt, and just generally fiddling with all the little miscellaneous things I have to fiddle with before I leave the bubble of peace and quiet of my car and merge back into the busy, hectic world of society. And although I don’t remember how it specifically happens, my general idiocy and clumsiness leads me to drop my Metropass onto the floor of the car, and it somehow bounces under the passenger seat and out of sight and convenient reaching distance. So after muttering the obligatory “fuck my life” line, I’m outside next to the car on the passenger side, digging in there under the seat in search of my Metropass…

…and I find a Ziploc bag containing four of my teeth.

SCORE!!!

Recovering a plastic bag full of your own teeth which had been sitting on the floor of your car for over a year – always a surefire sign of a good day to come. Look it up in one of those old farmer almanacs, it’s true. Almost 2:30 PM so far and no reason to believe otherwise. …of course, I am going to Ajax later…

It’s just obviously very unexpected to…you know…find a bag of your own teeth on the floor of your car in the morning, when all of them had supposedly been accounted for. I honestly don’t know how I could have gone so long without finding it sooner. I’m obviously not the cleanest and most organized guy in the world, but I like to think that I keep a relatively clean car…if only just a bit dusty. I guess it’s possible that this is the first time I’ve actually dropped something under the passenger seat, as the case where I’m sitting on the passenger side of my car is something that doesn’t come up very often, and so I guess I’ve never really had a reason to look under there.

Still, I ended up doing a full sweep of the floor of my car before setting off just in case there were more things to find. Like I’m still not sure what happened to the dustpan I lost in July ’04. The car’s not that old…but you know, can’t hurt to check. Didn’t find any more body parts, but I did find $1.27 in change, a toothpick (used, I think), and a mint from Kelsey’s…which might even predate the bag of teeth – at this point, I’m no longer sure of anything.

Is it possible that one of you passengers had actually even noticed it sitting on the floor of my car and just didn’t mention it to me? Please note that was not part of my interior decorative scheme, and that a bag of teeth is indeed not something I would put under the seat on purpose. Moving forward, if you notice something odd on the level of a Ziploc bag containing my extracted wisdom teeth lying around in my car, feel free to bring it to my attention and ask about it if you’re curious. Please note however, this would obviously not extend to the potato sack, chloroform rags, and weekly kidnap victim that I keep in the trunk. Don’t make eye contact. DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT. Those are all off limits for questioning.

I think I might make that necklace now.

“How often do you brush, Ralph?”
“Three times a day, sir.”
“Why must you turn my office into a house of lies!?!”