Are there really so few with our full 32?

I went in today for my bi-annual dental cleaning. (Or semi-annual? Bi-sex-monthial? I don’t know. I go in every six months — you do the Latin.)

Anyway, the deal went down the way it always does — Sue, the dental hygienist, asks me to open my yap, and after taking a gander she says: “Wow, wisdom teeth!”

That’s because I still have all my original factory-issued equipment, which includes a handful of choppers way at the back that are — apparently — some kind of evolutionary prank on mankind.

As Sue grinds away at the dross on my molars, she explains that wisdom teeth are really unnecessary. In fact, she says, they’re often more of a problem than they’re worth because they’re hard to reach, and pockets can develop between the gums and bone, letting cavities develop.

And although she’s probably right, her tone seems somehow scolding.

When Sue is finished hacking away at all my plaque, barnacles and other assorted dental carbuncles, she calls for Dr. Laine, the certified dentist, to survey the scene of the grime.

And when Dr. Laine has a look, she says: “Wow, wisdom teeth!”

When all the buttresses, stanchions, gantries and joists are finally removed from my mouth and I can frame a coherent sentence, I say: “Really? My wisdom teeth are a surprise package? What percentage of patients actually show up with their original wisdom teeth?”

“Oh, maybe ten percent,” they say.

Which means that nine out of ten human beings at some time in their lives made an appointment to have four inoffensive native-born body parts yanked bloodily and painfully from their heads.

Really?

So let me ask: Of the ten — maybe twelve — of you who are actually reading this column right now, did you voluntarily have your wisdom teeth removed at some point earlier in your life? Ask around. How many of your friends and family are toothless in the wisdom department? How many of them are full 32-ers like me?

And if it’s true that 90 percent of everyone else jettisoned a bunch of their bicuspids at an early age and I’m in such a small minority, allow me to ask one more question:

What the hell?

To find out if I really needed my wisdom teeth, or if I had somehow missed a memo a half-century ago, I sent a shout-out to Mama Google, who tells me: “A wisdom tooth or third molar is one of three molars per quadrant of the human dentition…the most posterior of the three.”

Huh?

Mama G goes on to say that they’re called “wisdom” teeth because they don’t erupt until you’re somewhere between 17 and 21, when you’ve started to become more “wise” than you were when you got all your other teeth. And that sounds about right, because I remember my wisdom teeth breaking through while I was in college, when my behavior was so wise it was a miracle I didn’t get all my other teeth knocked out on a daily basis. If you had known me then, the words “wise guy” would come to mind.

More fun molar facts from Mama G: Some people’s wisdom teeth never break through to see the light of day. In fact, if you’re an indigenous Mexican, chances are nearly 100 percent that your wisdom teeth will never erupt. But if you’re an Aboriginal Tasmanian the opposite is true, because the odds are nearly 100 percent that all your wisdom teeth will emerge just fine. But don’t take my word for it—go ahead, ask all the indigenous Mexicans and Aboriginal Tasmanians you know. They’ll tell you.

Why? Well, that’s just the way it is.

And so, again: What the hell?

As near as I can figure, our God-given wisdom teeth made sense a few hundred thousand years ago, when our primitive ancestors might crack off a molar while gnawing on a mastodon bone. It was nice to have a spare chopper lurking around way at the back, just hankering for the chance to be sent into the lineup as a pinch-nibbler.

But then about 10,000 years ago, the mastodons went away and we turned to farming, which let us munch more molar-friendly meals like Twinkies and Ho-Ho’s. There’s little chance that you’ll bust a molar cracking open a Twinkie or a Ho-Ho, no matter how far past the freshness date it gets.

And so, when it comes to superfluous wisdom teeth, off with their heads!

That’s why, according to my dentist and oral hygienist, 90 percent of us today have only 28 teeth to brush in the morning. Meanwhile, I’m wasting all that labor-intensive time scrubbing away at numbers 29-32 lurking way back there in the dim, dingy darkness.

For the record, my wisdom teeth have never given me any problems—other than a dental lecture bi-annually. (Semi-annually? Bi-sex-monthially?) Sue even suggested that I might want to have them removed, even at this late date.

She said it with a tone of: “Come on, everyone else is doing it.”

An argument like that might have worked pretty well on me back in college, when my “wisdom” was just breaking through, but today I think I’ll take a pass. Sure, my wisdom teeth may not really be all that functional, but I’m not going to start lopping off body parts just because I have no use for them.

Because if I give them my teeth, how long will it be before they come for my appendix and nipples?

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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